innerfense.com

What It Is

Inner Fence’s Credit Card Terminal is a credit card acceptance terminal app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows, and Windows Phone. Used with a card reader, it lets merchants take in-person payments by swiping a card or manually entering transaction details. It can be used by new merchants to accept payments through options such as Stripe, and it also supports connecting existing merchant accounts to multiple payment gateways.

Core Capabilities

In terms of service type, it covers both mobile and desktop platforms, making it suitable for on-site services, trade shows, temporary booths, and small retail stores. It supports Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Diners Club, and JCB. The Stripe page also mentions EMV chip cards, contactless payments, and Apple Pay, depending on the platform. Features include transaction history, refunds, map location, signatures, tips, sales tax, email/PDF receipts, charts, and multiple devices under the same account. On the API side, developers can launch Credit Card Terminal from their own app, pass in the amount, invoice number, and customer information, and receive the approval result, card type, and masked card number after completion, avoiding the need to handle card data directly inside their own application.

Pricing and Settlement

Public pricing shows Stripe-related plans at $79/month billed annually or $99/month billed monthly. There are also plans including Individual at $9/terminal/month plus 1.9% per transaction, Professional at $79/month including 10 terminals plus 0.9% per transaction, and Business at $299/month including 20 terminals with no per-transaction fee. A 30-day free trial is available, with no setup fee, annual fee, minimum processing fee, PCI compliance fee, or similar charges. The chargeback fee is $15. Funds are deposited on a 2-day rolling basis, while the first payout for new accounts may take up to 7 days.

Pros and Cons

The main advantages are broad platform coverage, the ability to reuse existing gateways such as Authorize.Net, Braintree, PayPal Payments Pro, and Stripe, plus U.S.-based customer support and free card reader promotions. On the security side, it emphasizes encrypted transaction data and not storing sensitive card information locally. The drawbacks are that the public materials do not disclose specific licensing details, PCI level, or a complete risk-control framework. International coverage appears to focus mainly on the United States and Canada, and merchants with low transaction volume may find the monthly fees relatively high.

Who It’s For and Access from China

It is better suited to sole proprietors, mobile service providers, small businesses, and teams with existing merchant accounts in the United States or Canada. The materials do not specify access conditions from China, so this remains unknown. Chinese merchants that need local acquiring or cross-border payment acceptance should generally compare Stripe Terminal, Square, PayPal Zettle, Clover, or locally compliant payment services first.