@GossiTheDog well, it's not *entirely* separate. The POS kit sits on the same LAN as the PDQ (card reader device) to tell it the transaction amount, and for the PDQ to signal whether the transaction was succesful or not. The traffic between the PDQ and the card processing company is encrypted, obvs, and typically transits the same local network as all the other devices in-store, and then over the public internet.