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

Question

Ideally, I would connect the Ingenico / VeriFone terminal to the network via an Ethernet cable, the terminal will only run the program that I wrote. This program will try the web service, a sound signal when it detects some information, wait for someone to enter, transfer the specified information back to the web service and print a ticket.

Is this possible with terminals from Ingenico / VeriFone / someone else?

I am looking for the form factor / semi-durability of the mentioned terminals. We don’t need / need something more like a PC or laptop.

Answer 1

I built applications on Verifone, Hypercom, and Trintech terminals. Verifones is by far the easiest to develop. They have simple file systems with flash memory and memory, applications load and run as files, the OS (Verix) is POSIX, for example, with good C / C ++ libraries, etc. The only drawback is the cost of the tool, VerixV uses an ARM SDT (5 thousand Euros per seat) and older Verix terminals (based on Coldfire) use the SDS compiler. The Dev kit comes with default keys for signing your applications (not for most secure ones, but you can password protect access to download through the terminal). I have written many applications on these terminals, not just a payment application. Verifone multi-app controller (VMAC) is a bunch of crap, but it’s very easy to run multiple applications on your own using messaging channels between applications (your applications will not work on third-party terminals that use VMAC, though). We used an Ethernet connection for FTP to control the loading of applications and configurations, as well as for batch transaction processing. WIFI is also used on the latest terminals for the same (also used 3G terminals, but I did not do any code on them). Verifone is PC-like in terms of code development, and we shared a lot of library / application code between WIN32 / Verix / VerixV and Linux. Verifone terminals are well-built and can be overused, but these days, most serious terminal manufacturers do a good job.