Can I program an ingenico/verifone terminal to do whatever I want?

Question

Ideally, I would connect an ingenico/verifone terminal to the net via an ethernet cable, the terminal will run exclusively a program that I wrote. This program would poll a webservice, beep when it detects some kind of info, wait for somebodys input, transmit said info back to the webservice and print a ticket.

Is this possible with terminals from ingenico/verifone/someonelse?

I'm looking for the form factor/semi-ruggedness of said terminals. We don't need/want sometime bigger like an PC or laptop.

Answer 1

Taking an existing payment device and running your own code on it - not really. Payment devices (things with card readers and user inputs) make it VERY difficult to get other code onto them for security reasons.

If your volumes are pretty high, then you might be able to talk one of those companies into selling you hardware, but these guys like to deal in high volumes when they can.

Answer 2

I have built applications on Verifone, Hypercom and Trintech terminals. The Verifones are by far the easiest to devlop for. They have a simple flash and RAM file systems, apps are downloaded and run as files, the OS (Verix) is POSIX like with good C/C++ libraries etc. Only downside is tool cost, VerixV use ARM SDT (5K Euro per seat) and older Verix terminals (Coldfire based) use SDS compiler. Dev kit comes with default keys to sign your apps (not most secures, but you can password protect download access on terminal). I have written lots of apps on these terminals, not just payment app. Verifone multi-app controller (VMAC) is a crock of shit but it's very easy to run multiple apps yourself using pipes for inter-app comms (your apps won't run on third party terminals which use VMAC though). We used ethernet connectivity for FTP to manage app and config download as well as transaction batching. Also used WIFI on latest terminals for same (also used 3G terminals but I didnt do any of code on these). Verifone is PC like in terms of code development and we shared lots of library/app code between WIN32/Veris/VerixV and Linux. Verifone terminals are well built and can take a lot of abuse but then most serios terminal manufacturers do a good job these days.