This page introduces in-person (card-present) payments with Valpay and Adyen, where a shopper pays on a physical Adyen payment terminal and your point-of-sale (POS) app drives the transaction.
What in-person payments are
In-person payments are card-present transactions: the shopper is physically present and pays on an Adyen payment terminal. The shopper can tap, insert, or swipe a card, or use an NFC digital wallet such as Apple Pay or Google Pay. Your POS app, sometimes called a cash register, starts and tracks each transaction by talking to the terminal through Adyen's Terminal API.
Point-of-sale payments are processed on the same Adyen platform as your online payments, so you can manage terminals and transactions in one place.
How the pieces fit together
Your POS app sends a payment request and displays the result to your staff.
The Adyen payment terminal interacts with the shopper, reads the card, and gets the payment authorized.
The Adyen platform processes the transaction and records it.
Terminal API is the JSON-based interface your POS app uses to communicate, with no client libraries required.
For how these components communicate, including cloud and local connection modes, see Architecture Overview.
Accounts, stores, and terminals
Valpay provisions your Adyen setup. You do not create an Adyen account directly.
A Valpay Brand maps to an Adyen merchant account.
Under the Brand, Valpay creates a merchant, which is a sub-merchant in Adyen.
Under the merchant, Valpay creates stores, each with a Store ID.
Terminals are assigned to a store. The Store ID is required on Valpay transactions. Ordering, assigning, and managing terminals is handled with the Valpay support team, not through your integration code.
Tap to Pay as an alternative
If you do not want a dedicated hardware terminal, Tap to Pay turns a supported commercial off-the-shelf phone or tablet into a contactless reader using software. It uses the same Adyen platform and a similar payment model. See Tap to Pay Overview to decide whether it fits your use case.
Next steps
Read Architecture Overview to choose how your POS app connects to terminals.
Read Terminal API Payment Flow to make your first in-person payment.
Contact Valpay Support for terminal provisioning, Store IDs, and credentials.