The question comes from beer gardens, food trucks, vaulted cellars and every business whose line has gone down on a Friday night. It is a fair question, and providers like to answer it with “works offline too” without anyone saying what exactly that means.
Three things have to work without a connection, and they are not equally easy to get.
1. Can you take payment without internet?
The easy part. A till that holds its product data locally takes orders and settles bills whether there is a line or not. Anyone relying on a pure web interface with no local cache has bought the problem.
2. What becomes of the signature without a connection?
This is where it is decided. Every recordable transaction must be signed by a certified security module, at the start and at the end of the transaction — not later, when it happens to suit.
Local module
Sits in the till as a module, SD card or USB stick, or as a device on the network. Signs with no internet at all. For businesses with an unreliable line, that is the answer.
Cloud module
Signs on the provider’s server. No connection, no signature. Some solutions buffer and sign afterwards — whether that is permissible in your case depends on the provider’s certification and belongs in writing, not in a phone call.
For some providers “works offline” only means the interface does not freeze. The right question is not whether you can take payment but whether it gets signed. Make them answer it using the word for the security module.
3. How does the receipt work without internet?
The obligation to issue a receipt applies regardless of the connection. A receipt printer on a cable or Bluetooth meets it; a receipt that is meant to go out by email does not, without a line. If you rely on digital receipts, you need a printer as a fallback.
4. What do you do when the security module fails?
A failure is not a reason to stop trading — but it must be documented. In practice:
- Record the failure with date, time and cause, and record when it ends.
- Keep trading and issuing receipts; the failure must be recognisable on the receipts.
- Fix the cause and record the fix as well.
- For a longer outage, involve your accountant before the month is closed.
What does not work: sitting the failure out and entering the transactions later as if nothing happened. That is exactly what shows up in a spot check, because the gap in the signatures stays visible.
5. What has to happen once the connection is back?
As soon as the line is up, everything that ran locally has to be brought across — takings, stock, card payments, reservations. The common failure is not that the till does not sync but that nobody checks whether it synced completely. Comparing the daily total before and after takes a minute.
6. What should you ask before you buy a till?
- Is the security module local or in the cloud? If cloud: what happens without a connection, in writing?
- Does the till hold its product data locally?
- Is there a receipt printer that prints with no network?
- How long does offline operation run before something blocks?
- Are card payments accepted offline — and who carries the risk if one fails?
- How does it sync afterwards, and how do you see that it worked?