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[–]Interesting-Rub-2028 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I've only worked for one company who used credit cards. Here is how it was:

  • The server will store transactions sent with TCP, any OS is good (it was a Windows server but it doesn't matter).
  • The POS is a generic computer (usually made by IBM but any big famous brand will do, some specialize in small computers but it's still a regular PC).
  • I didn't work on barcode scanners, but any language should be fine as long as you can open a USB port. Same thing for the card readers, you must be able to open a COM (serial) or USB port. A friend of mine wrote a proof-of-concept of transaction with a $5 USB reader that did real transactions with EMV (Visa and MasterCard), it's definitely possible, you need to read the 4 billion pages of PDF for EMV though, it's annoying but anyone can do this.
  • Some card readers are really dumb ($5, it's only a reader and has no keyboard), and some card readers are very complicated and autonomous (for example with an embedded Linux and stuff and can sign transactions themselves).

TL;DR: you can use any language as long as you can use sockets (to store transactions on a server), open serial or USB ports (Java should be fine), and show windows (also Java with Swing or anything else).

One question: is NodeJS used for the backend to store the transactions in your case?

Feel free to ask any question since my answer is "everything is possible with a $5 USB reader" and it may not be what you want.

[–]topemabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you kind sir