What to do when the POS network fails at rush hour
Keep serving. Take cash, write down or record every other sale with the customer's name and the amount, never release goods on a "payment pending" screen, and match everything to the bank statement once the network is back. A till that works offline keeps recording sales while you wait.
It is 13:10 on a Saturday, and the queue at your supermarket reaches the shelves. The card machine shows a spinning wheel. Three customers say their bank has debited them. The cashier looks at you.
The short answer
Keep the line moving, and keep your records. Take cash. For anything else, record who paid, how much and when, and hold the goods back until the money is confirmed in your account. When the network returns, match every held sale with your bank statement before you close the day.
A till that keeps working offline helps here, because the sale is recorded even when the payment cannot be confirmed yet. It does not make a bank transfer arrive any faster.
Why this keeps happening
Networks fail at two levels. Your own connection can drop. Or the shared infrastructure behind many banks and apps can slow down for everyone.
The second happened on a large scale in May 2026. BusinessDay reported on 13 May 2026 that downtime at NIBSS, which runs Nigeria's instant payment platform, disrupted transfers on bank apps and fintech platforms nationwide. Carbon told customers it had confirmation from NIBSS of "intermittent failures, which will delay your transfers" (BusinessDay, 13 May 2026). The article did not give an end time or an official NIBSS statement on the cause.
The CBN has asked POS providers to reduce the risk. A circular dated 11 Dec 2025 told acquirers, processors and terminal service providers to link POS transactions to both NIBSS and UPSL, the two licensed aggregators, so traffic switches automatically if one fails. The CBN gave about a month to finish, to mid-January 2026, and said the aim was to end a "persistent single-channel bottleneck" (Nairametrics, 12 Dec 2025; Techpoint Africa, 12 Dec 2025). That helps card and terminal payments. It cannot fix a failure at your own shop.
What to do, minute by minute
- Say it to the queue. "The payment network is slow. Cash is quick, and other payments will take a little longer." A calm sentence stops the argument at the counter.
- Sort the problem. Is it only your machine, or is every phone slow too? Check by trying a transfer on a phone on another network. If only your machine is down, switch to a phone hotspot or move one terminal to the best signal in the room.
- Take cash first. Cash needs no network. Give correct change and record the sale.
- Record every other sale. Write the amount, the customer's name or table, the time and the cashier. Use paper if you must. A sale without a record is the one that becomes a "shortage" tonight.
- Do not release goods on a promise. A screenshot, a "payment pending" message or a customer's word is not money in your account. For the checks that work, read how to know a transfer has really entered your account.
- For a held sale, keep the goods or ask for cash. If the customer is a regular and you choose to trust them, the manager decides, writes it down and signs. Not the cashier.
- Reconcile when it returns. List every held sale. Check each against the bank statement, not the alert. Mark it paid, or chase it the same day.
- Write one line for the log: time down, time back, sales held, sales confirmed, sales still open.
The hidden cost
Most losses in an outage are not caused by the outage itself. They come from the next four hours. A cashier releases goods on a screenshot. A held sale is forgotten. A customer who really was debited is never reconciled and leaves angry. The shift ends with a difference nobody can explain.
The fix is the same each time: a record for every sale, even when the payment cannot be confirmed yet.
How Jollozi helps
Jollozi POS works offline. The till keeps recording sales while the connection is down and syncs to the cloud when it returns, and sync requests time out so a dropped network cannot freeze the screen. That means your line keeps moving and every sale has a record with the cashier's name and the time.
Once the network is back, transfers paid through FlashPay show up as paid on the sale without anyone matching them. At close, the blind cash count and the day close set what was sold against what was paid, so a gap from the outage shows up as a gap, not a mystery.
A payment that depends on the bank or the internet cannot be confirmed while either is down. Jollozi will not pretend otherwise. What it gives you is the record.
Questions
Can I still take card payments when the network is down?
Not through a terminal that needs a connection. Take cash, or ask the customer to wait or pay by another method. Do not run a card payment by writing down details, since you cannot verify them.
What if the customer says they have been debited?
Take their name, the amount and the time, and tell them you will confirm against your statement. If the money reached your account, release the goods. If not, the customer should contact their bank, which holds the debit.
Should I tell customers to leave and come back?
Only if cash is not an option for them. Offer a time, write down what they ordered and keep it aside. Don't promise anything you cannot hold.
How do I stop this costing me every month?
Keep a second way to connect, such as a phone hotspot on another network. Use a till that works offline. Check held sales the same day. And close every shift with a blind count.
Practice what an offline sale looks like on the Jollozi till at till.jollozi.com/demo. To end the shift well, read how to close a shift.
Sources
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