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Industries

Same Platform. Different Room.

A counter, a table, a forecourt, a chair and an invoice are five completely different moments to take a payment. What sits underneath them does not have to be five different relationships.

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Portable Terminal Illustrative
Counter and floor Table and chair Forecourt and kiosk Invoice and on site

Equipment shown is illustrative. What a room actually needs is decided from a walk-through.

Five environments

What changes when the room changes.

Select an environment to see where payment actually happens in it, what that demands of the setup, and the equipment that usually ends up on the floor.

Retail

The queue is the constraint.

Everything about a retail setup is decided by what happens when four people are waiting. The payment has to be the fastest part of the transaction, the second lane has to open without a project, and the curbside order and the website have to land in the same place as the till.

  • Card-present speed at the till, and a second lane ready
  • Shop floor, curbside and online on one account
  • Returns and exchanges a new hire can do unsupervised
Retail Payments Typical equipment: Smart Terminal · Countertop POS
Retail Illustrative
Lane 2 open Tap to pay

Every industry with a page of its own.

The complete list, and it grows. A category that is not here yet is not a category we do not serve — it is one that does not have its own page written yet, and the answer to that is a conversation rather than a form.

What does not change

Five setups, one thing underneath them.

  • The room decides the setup. It should not decide the relationship.

    A business that sells at a counter, takes an order on the phone, ships from a website and invoices its trade customers has four payment environments — and, more often than not, three merchant accounts, three support lines and three reports covering one business. None of that is required. The environments are configuration; the relationship underneath them is one.

  • Every way a customer might want to pay.

    The same acceptance is available in every environment on this page. Which of it is switched on is decided by the room, not by a different contract.

    • Contactless
    • Wallets
    • Chip & swipe
    • Keyed & phone
    • Online checkout
    • ACH & eCheck

  • Equipment chosen for the room

    A handheld that reaches the table, a terminal that survives a forecourt, a reader that travels — picked from what the walk-through found rather than from a catalog page.

  • A pricing program you can change

    Interchange-plus, flat pricing or a compliant Cash Discount program, and the ability to move between them if your customers react differently than expected.

  • One report, however it arrived

    Counter, table, pump, chair, invoice and website all report through the same account, so reconciliation is one job rather than one job per channel.

Getting set up

It starts with your floor, not with a product list.

The same six stages whichever environment you are in. Only the first one is about your room — and it is the one that decides everything after it.

  1. Walk the floor

    Where payment actually happens: the till, the table, the pump, the chair, the van, the invoice. Equipment is not discussed until this is written down.

  2. Read the statement

    Your existing processing statement, line by line, because the real cost and the real channel split are in it rather than in a headline rate.

  3. Choose the setup

    Equipment for the room and a pricing program for the margin, decided together — the two constrain each other and choosing them separately is how setups go wrong.

  4. Underwrite

    The file goes to the bank whose appetite fits the category. What is offered, and on what conditions, comes out of underwriting rather than out of this page.

  5. Install and train

    Hardware placed where the walk-through said it should be, and staff shown the flow they will actually use — including the refund path, which is the one always skipped.

  6. Run and review

    Reporting in one place from the first batch, and a proper review once there is a full month of real activity to read rather than an assumption to defend.

Nothing above is a schedule. How long a changeover takes depends on underwriting, on the equipment involved and on how much integration your existing systems need. What the order is for is that each decision arrives with the information it actually needs — which is most of what keeps a changeover short.

Why Highline

What a category specialist is actually for.

Anyone can sell a terminal. The difference shows in the details that only matter in one kind of business — how a fuel pre-authorization behaves, where a tip has to land, what a deposit does to a booking, which invoice belongs on a card and which does not. Those are learned from the floor, not from a product sheet.

Payment Processing
The walk-through comes first
Equipment is chosen from where payment actually happens in your room, not from a catalog tier.
45+ banking relationships
Breadth behind the account, so a business that adds a channel, a site or a product line changes its setup rather than its provider.
One account under every channel
Counter, online, phone, recurring and bank debit report in the same place, so reconciliation is one job.
The pricing program can move
Interchange-plus, flat or a compliant Cash Discount program, changed later if your customers react differently than expected.
Someone who can open the transaction
A question about one payment answered by a person who can look at it, rather than by a form that promises a reply.
Questions

What actually changes by industry.

The questions that come before choosing an environment. If yours is about a room we have not described, that is the conversation rather than the exception.

Start With a Walk-Through
My business is not one of the industries listed. Does that mean no?

No. The directory lists the environments that have a page written about them, which is a statement about what we have documented rather than about what we support. Underwriting looks at a business — what it sells, how it takes payment, how it has traded — rather than at a category dropdown.

What actually happens is a walk-through: where payment happens in your room, what has to be true at that moment, and what the setup therefore needs. Most businesses outside the five turn out to resemble one of them closely enough that the conversation starts from there. Every account is subject to underwriting and approval.

If the platform is the same, what actually differs?

Where the payment happens, and what has to be true at that moment. A table needs the check closed without the customer moving; a forecourt needs a pre-authorization before a drop of fuel is pumped; a salon needs the tip attributed to the person who earned it; a professional practice needs an authorization record rather than a counter. Same account underneath, different setup on top.

We run more than one of these under one company.

That is common — a c-store with a kitchen, a salon with a retail shelf, a retailer with an online store. The point of one merchant account is that those do not become separate relationships to reconcile. Which environments are enabled is a configuration decision, made once and changed later without re-papering everything.

Do we have to use the equipment you show?

No. The devices on this page stand in for photography and illustrate the kind of setup a room usually needs, not a required product. What is actually installed is decided from the walk-through, and where existing hardware can be kept, keeping it is the first option rather than the last.

How long does changing over take?

No honest number fits here, because it depends on underwriting, on the equipment involved and on how much integration your existing systems need. What can be said is the order things happen in, which is the chapter above — and that agreeing who tests the refund path and who reconciles is what usually decides whether a changeover feels short or long.

Can we start with one part and add the rest later?

Yes, and it is usually the sensible way round. Acceptance first, then the environments that were waiting on it, then a pricing program or equipment when there is real activity to judge them against. Adding a channel later is a configuration change, not a second relationship.

Get started with Highline

Start with your room, not with a product list.

Your floor. Your setup. One account.

Get Started Services
  • Equipment chosen from a walk-through
  • 45+ banking relationships behind the account
  • One report, whichever room the payment came from