It is ultimately your decision if you wish to continue to take credit card payments while in offline mode.  It is almost always to your advantage to continue to take credit card payments while offline but there are some risks involved and special steps that need to be considered.  If you need help making this decision, please reach out to your RFC.

 

Offline mode considerations and best practices
   

  1. Credit card payments cannot be authorized until the internet connection is restored. This means that it is possible for a payment that was taken during Offline Mode to be denied when your system goes back online.
  2. You are responsible for any declined, expired, or disputed payments while operating in Offline Mode.
  3. It is best practice to verify the cardholder's name and card expiration date, especially when you are offline.
  4. You can swipe a credit card and use EMV (chip) in Offline Mode. Toast does not recommend manually recording card numbers and later entering them as a Card Not Present (CNP) transaction. If that is necessary, remember you must have the CVV number to retroactively process payment and you are required to protect the cardholder's data to remain PCI compliant (see PCI Compliance Overview).
  5. Though payment authorizations can't be guaranteed after 5 days, Toast recommends that restaurants process offline payments ASAP. After 5 days, the authorization will possibly expire, causing the payment to be declined. If this happens, the restaurant will need to reach back out to the guest for another form of payment. Toast recommends using a cellular backup stick to avoid declined payments because of expired authorizations.
  6. If this is a concern for you, you can disable or set a threshold for credit card transactions during Offline Mode. To have these values changes please submit a help desk ticket.