This article contains guidance for your merchants operating in offline mode. We recommend that you take these into account when creating merchant-facing support documentation.

Availability

• Terminal offline mode is available globally on iOS, Android, React SD, and all Stripe Readers.
• Payment methods supported:
  • Available card_present payment methods
  • Interac in Canada isn't supported as a payment method offline
  • EFTPOS only cards aren't supported and co-branded EFTPOS cards are routed through the international scheme.
• Customers can present a card or NFC-based mobile wallet belonging to a supported card brand. Swiping cards isn’t allowed. If you’re collecting payments in the European Economic Area, customers are required to insert their card and enter a PIN.

Messaging Offline Mode: Merchants

While it's your decision to message Offline Mode capabilities to your merchants, we strongly recommend that you do so in your POS UI and documentation. This is so that your merchants are aware of the risk implications and know that they have to reconnect to the internet as soon as they are able to. Alternate providers with offline capabilities use mechanisms like a red UI status bar component, or displaying the number of uncaptured transactions to indicate offline network status. Additionally, merchants need to ensure that they have connected to a mobile Terminal reader first before they start operating offline. If they don't, they'll be unable to take any payments offline.

From an implementation perspective we have made the operating offline experience as close as possible to collecting a payment with the Terminal mobile readers so merchants operations and end customer experience is not disrupted.

Messaging Offline Mode: Customers

We recommend that you do not indicate that a merchant is offline in a cardholder facing way. From a cardholder perspective we have adjusted the transaction experience to indicate whether a cardholder payment method can be accepted offline or not.

Operating offline

What can you do when offline?

Payment collection from a merchant’s perspective is similar to operating online. Some payment features are not available offline:

• Incremental and extended authorizations
• Saving a card for future use
• Refunding a transaction that happened offline
• Full printed receipt details

How can I reduce decline risk while operating offline?

When operating offline, your merchants assume all decline risk for the transaction. This means that if the issuing bank declined the transaction after it has been forwarded to them, there is no way to recover the funds. In order to safeguard against declines we recommend the following

• Ask your merchants to re-establish network connectivity as soon as possible so the payments can be forwarded to Stripe.
• Establish internal risk controls and/or merchant facing risk controls like transaction limits that can disallow transactions beyond a certain value being accepted offline. For example, a merchant can restrict transactions above 100 USD in value. Another example of a risk control is limiting the total number of transactions that can are collected offline.

If implementing these controls, please add messaging in your documentation and point of sale application to instruct your merchants.

Stripe has an enforced offline maximum of 10,000 USD per transaction, which is converted to the local currency.

Card presentment scenarios

Customers can present a card or NFC-based mobile wallet belonging to a supported card brand. Swiping cards isn’t allowed. If you’re collecting payments in the European Economic Area, customers are required to insert their card and enter a PIN.

What if a merchant loses their device?

If the device collecting offline payments is lost, there are no mechanisms to retrieve unsynced offline payments.

What if a merchant uninstalls their application?

If the POS application is uninstalled with unsynced offline payments, merchants will permanently lose these transactions. Note that updating the application does not impact unsynced offline transactions.

Can a merchant switch between locations?

Yes. If a merchant switches from location A to location B, they will still be able to upload their transactions when connectivity is resumed.

What if a merchant loses their reader?

If a merchant loses their reader, they will still be able to upload their transactions when connectivity is resumed.

What if the reader device is non-functional/responsive due to tamper?

When operating offline, your merchants assume all risk in connection with the storage and retrieval of stored offline transactions. If a reader enters a Device tampered state, payments stored will continue to be forwarded to Stripe upon re-establishment of internet connectivity, until the device is un-authenticated, at which point the POS is no longer able to activate the reader. In a typical case, a user has about 30 days from tamper to re-establish internet connectivity and forward the payments. Please contact support to assist with a reader replacement.