JET POS / Guides

Buyer guides

What a POS actually costs you

Nine guides to the parts of a point-of-sale purchase that don't appear in the quote — written by people who sell POS hardware, sourced so you don't have to take our word for any of it.

A restaurant owner at a back-office desk reviewing a multi-page merchant processing statement late at night
Cost of ownership

The hidden fees in a POS system — the full list

Four layers of charges sit under every POS quote. The processing markup you can't see, per-device fees, add-on modules, and the exit costs. With the arithmetic.

12 min read · updated September 2026
A small retail counter with a compact POS terminal, price tag hanging from it, in clean daylight
Pricing models

Is a POS with no monthly fee real, or is there a catch?

Free software is real. Free POS is not. The four business models, who actually pays in each, and the volume where free becomes the expensive choice.

11 min read · updated September 2026
A payment terminal on a shop counter with a padlock resting beside it, shot from a low angle in warm daylight
Payments

Can you keep your POS if you change payment processors?

Five mechanisms lock a merchant to one processor. Only one of them is technical. How to spot each before you sign, and how to escape after.

15 min read · updated September 2026
A cafe counter at peak hour with a handwritten cash-only sign taped to the card terminal and a queue of customers waiting
Reliability

What happens to your POS when the internet goes down?

Six things can fail and only one is your internet. What survives each, what offline mode really does, and who eats the decline.

12 min read · updated September 2026
A stack of contract pages and a pen on a small business back-office desk, lit by a desk lamp
Contracts

POS contracts, exit fees, and how to get out

A flat exit fee is a few hundred dollars. A liquidated damages clause is your monthly bill times every remaining month. Which one did you sign?

12 min read · updated September 2026
Two POS terminals side by side on a restaurant counter during a changeover, one powered down, one running
Migration

How to switch POS systems without closing for a day

You don't switch in a day — you switch in two weeks and cut over in an hour. The full runbook, including what doesn't move itself.

14 min read · updated September 2026
A POS screen on a shop counter displaying a plain-language question about sales data, with the shop out of focus behind it
Technology

What AI actually does in a POS in 2026 — and what's just marketing

Thirteen AI features sorted into real, semi-real and marketing — with the independent measurements and a five-question demo test.

10 min read · updated September 2026
A small printed notice at a shop till explaining a card surcharge, with a payment terminal beside it
Rules & compliance

Can you charge customers a credit card fee?

Three practices, five prohibited jurisdictions, and the network rules that apply everywhere. Sourced to the statutes.

13 min read · updated September 2026
A restaurant kitchen pass with paper tickets on a rail beside a mounted kitchen display screen during service
Restaurant operations

Do you actually need a kitchen display system?

A ten-point score to decide honestly, the real per-screen pricing, and the ticket-routing detail every cost comparison gets wrong.

12 min read · updated September 2026
Why we publish these

We'd rather you knew what you were buying.

JET sells POS stations outright: pay once, $0 a month for the software, no contract, and we take no cut of your card sales. That model only makes sense to a buyer who understands what the alternatives really cost — so these guides say where we win, and where we don't have the feature at all.