POS Peripherals: Cash Drawers, Displays and Terminals
The printer gets specified carefully and everything else at the counter gets bought on price. Those peripherals are what staff and customers actually touch, and they fail more often than the printer does.
Cash drawers
Almost always driven by the receipt printer rather than the till, which surprises people setting up their first system.
The printer has a drawer port and opens it on command from the POS software. That has two practical consequences.
The connector must match. Drawer cables are not universal, and a drawer that will not open is frequently a connector or pinout mismatch rather than a fault. Confirm compatibility with the specific printer model rather than assuming.
If the printer fails, the drawer stops opening. A printer outage becomes a cash handling problem as well as a receipt problem, which is worth knowing when deciding whether to hold a spare printer. Our POS printer guide covers spares reasoning.
On the drawer itself, the specifications that matter are the note and coin layout suiting your currency and float, and build quality — a drawer opens and closes hundreds of times a day and cheap mechanisms fail within a year.
Customer displays
Frequently a requirement rather than a nicety, since showing the customer what is being charged is expected and in some places mandated.
Two things to check.
How it connects. Some displays attach to the printer, some to the till, some are standalone network devices. That determines what fails when something else fails.
Readability at the counter. Viewing angle and brightness matter more than resolution — the customer is standing, off to one side, frequently under overhead lighting.
Where displays also show promotional content, confirm what drives that content and whether it needs anything installed locally — the same middleware question that affects printing architecture.
Payment terminals sit outside your control
Worth stating clearly because it shapes what you can specify.
Payment terminals are usually supplied or mandated by the payment provider, and they are subject to security requirements that limit how they connect and what they integrate with.
What that means practically: plan the counter around the terminal rather than expecting it to fit whatever arrangement you build. Its cabling, mounting and network requirements are frequently non-negotiable.
Two points that affect the rest of the counter. Payment infrastructure is generally required to be network-segmented, which affects how everything else at the counter connects — our segmentation guide covers the principle. And terminal cabling competes for the same limited counter space as everything else.
Counter space is the constraint nobody measures
The practical problem that appears on installation day.
A counter has to hold a till or tablet, a receipt printer, a scanner, a customer display, a payment terminal, a cash drawer and the cabling for all of it — plus room for the goods being served.
Three things help.
Measure at a real site, including the smallest one, not at head office. Our rollout guide covers why pilots need awkward sites.
Prefer vertical footprints. A vertical printer or a display on a pole uses counter depth rather than area.
Count the power outlets. Each device needs one, and counters frequently have fewer than the equipment requires.
Scanning at the counter
Covered fully in our front-of-store guide, and two points belong here.
Presentation scanning changes throughput because it replaces three actions with one — the operator moves the item past a scanner already reading, rather than picking up a handheld, aiming and triggering.
Laser scanners cannot read phone screens, which now covers coupons, loyalty cards, e-tickets and payment codes. That failure is silent: nothing happens, someone keys it manually, and it never appears in reporting.
Spares at the counter
Different from a warehouse because a counter failure stops trading at that position immediately.
The pragmatic position for most operations: hold a spare printer and a spare scanner centrally, with next-morning delivery, and keep local spares only where a lane going down immediately costs more than an idle unit.
Two things to keep locally regardless, because they are cheap and stop trading: receipt rolls of the correct width, and a drawer cable if yours is a non-standard type.
Our standardisation guide covers why central spares only work once the estate is uniform.
Specifying a counter
What drives the cash drawer, and does the connector match. How does the customer display connect, and what fails with it. What are the payment terminal’s cabling and network requirements. How much counter space and how many outlets are actually available at the smallest site. And are phone screens scanned, which rules out lasers entirely.
See also our retail and hospitality page.
Common questions
What opens the cash drawer?
Almost always the receipt printer, on command from the POS software. That means the connector must match the specific printer model, and a printer failure stops the drawer opening as well as printing.
Why will my cash drawer not open?
Frequently a connector or pinout mismatch rather than a fault. Drawer cables are not universal, so confirm compatibility with the printer model rather than assuming.
Can I specify my own payment terminal?
Usually not — it is generally supplied or mandated by the payment provider and subject to security requirements limiting how it connects. Plan the counter around it rather than expecting it to fit your arrangement.
What is most often underestimated at the counter?
Space and power outlets. A counter holds a till, printer, scanner, display, payment terminal, drawer and cabling plus the goods. Measure at the smallest site, prefer vertical footprints, and count outlets.
What should be kept locally as spares?
Receipt rolls of the correct width and a drawer cable if yours is non-standard — both cheap and both stop trading. Printers and scanners are usually better held centrally with next-morning delivery.
Tell us your printer model and drawer type and we will confirm the cable before you order.
