If you really want to boost up your business, you have to introduce a system of acknowledging credit and debit card transactions as few people carry huge cash in their pockets today. As a consequence you will require credit card machine to process them quickly and accurately as there is no manual process through which you can quickly check the genuineness and validity of the card offered. 

Use of such machine requires you to open up a merchant account with the provider at the first place. The cliché is that every credit card terminal will not be compatible to every type of merchant account. Hence if you can find a terminal that is user friendly and accepts all types of merchant accounts, it will be a boon for your business. 

A regular or free credit card terminal that accepts merchant accounts based on mail order, phone order, internet order or e-commerce based merchant account will serve as an all purpose instrument for your business. Such machine comes complete with external ports that will allow you to plug in external ports for check readers and pin pads. Another feature could be the compatibility of such usual or wireless credit card machine to new programs and the ability to run multiple value added services under various merchant accounts that could help you to make your machine accommodating the changes occurring in the market outside.