One of the best ways to prevent your credit card terminals from breaking down prematurely is to clean them periodically.

The presence of dust, crumbs, and paper lint can cause built-in printers and stripe readers to become clogged making card reading devices difficult or impossible to use properly. A simple $2 investment in a can of compressed air, however, can help you quickly and easily clean your terminals, helping them last for up to five years without missing a beat.

When you buy new equipment of any kind for your business it is essential that you stay in the habit of maintaining it, and remind your employees to do the same.

Another, perhaps less obvious way to ensure the longevity of your card reading equipment is to buy a terminals that use integrated flash memory to store the software that runs them. Flash memory makes it easy to download and install system updates, preventing software advances and security vulnerabilities from rendering your devices obsolete.