The board approves the amenity. The budget is zero. Everyone is happy. Then someone on the technology committee asks the question that stalls the whole thing for a month: hold on — you're putting a payment device on our Wi-Fi?
It is a reasonable question and it deserves a better answer than "don't worry about it." Here is what a managed micro market actually connects to, what it does not, and the four questions worth asking any operator before you sign.
What the store connects to
A TapStore™ smart store needs an internet connection for two jobs: authorizing the card tap, and reporting inventory and equipment health back to us. That is the entire scope of what the connection does.
Guest network access is sufficient. The store does not need to sit on your building-management network or on the resident network. It does not need a static IP, a port opened on your firewall, a VLAN carved out, or anything at all from your IT provider. If your building offers guest Wi-Fi in the lobby or amenity room, that is the right place for it — and it is the place we will ask for.
This matters because it keeps the store outside the perimeter that actually concerns you. It sits on the same side of the network as a visitor's phone.
What it does not do
The store is a client on the network, not a service on it. It initiates outbound connections and nothing connects inward to it. In practical terms:
- It does not see, route, or store any resident traffic.
- It does not connect to door access, elevator, HVAC, camera or any other building system.
- It does not hold resident personal information. We never receive a resident name, unit number, or address from a purchase.
- It does not require software installed on any building computer.
The transaction a resident makes is between their card and the payment processor — the same relationship as tapping at any store in the city. Your building is not a party to it, does not process it, and has no custody of the card data. That is worth stating plainly to a board, because the unspoken fear is usually that the building somehow inherits liability for cardholder data. It does not.
When the Wi-Fi drops
Every unit also carries a cellular SIM as automatic backup. If the building's Wi-Fi goes down — an outage, a router swap, a provider change — the store fails over and keeps trading. Residents do not notice, and nobody has to call anyone.
This is the practical reason the connection question is smaller than it first appears. We are not asking you to guarantee uptime on your Wi-Fi. We are asking for access to it, with our own fallback behind it.
The two operational questions nobody asks until later
Password rotation. If your guest network password rotates on a schedule — and in a well-run building it should — tell the operator during the site walk, not after the first rotation takes the store offline. A competent operator will have a process for this and will not need a truck roll for it. Ask what that process is.
Network audits and insurance questionnaires. If your property or insurer runs periodic network reviews, the store will show up as a device. You want to be able to answer "what is that" without opening a ticket. Ask the operator for a one-page description of the device and its connection profile that you can file with your building documentation before installation, not after an auditor flags it.
Four questions to ask any operator
- Will guest network access do, or are you asking for our internal network? If the answer is the internal network, ask why, and be sceptical of the reason.
- Does the unit accept any inbound connection? It should not.
- What happens when our Wi-Fi goes down? If the answer is "the machine stops working," you have found a meaningful difference between operators.
- What do you hold about our residents? The right answer is nothing.
Why this is worth ten minutes now
Connectivity is the least glamorous item on the requirement list and the one most likely to reappear as an objection three weeks after everyone agreed in principle. Boards do not reject micro markets over network security. They defer them — which, for an amenity that costs the building nothing and takes a morning to install, produces the same outcome for another quarter.
Answer it once, in writing, at the front of the conversation, and it stops being a question.
Built by a Retailer. Not a Vending Company.
The Merchant Group™ is led by a merchant with 30 years of retail experience — Walmart, Staples, Starbucks, INS Markets. We operate TapStore™ micro markets across Etobicoke and Toronto: locked, glass-front, tap to pay, walk away. Your building provides the footprint, two standard outlets, and Wi-Fi access. We handle everything else.