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TicketingHub Help

How to Keep Your Android Device Up to Date

Android devices receive security updates from their manufacturer, separately from the app updates you get through the Play Store. Keeping those up to date matters for any device you take payments on: some payment features stop working on devices that have fallen too far behind.

Why Security Updates Matter

Card payment providers set their own rules about which devices they will work with, and those rules are enforced by the provider, not by TicketingHub. If your device falls outside them, the rest of the app keeps working normally — you can still sell, scan, check in, and print — but that payment method becomes unavailable until the device is updated.

Stripe Tap to Pay is the one to watch. To take contactless payments on the device itself, the device must:

  • Run Android 13 or later
  • Have a security update from the last 12 months
  • Have developer options turned off — a settings menu normally used only by engineers
  • Be unmodified: the manufacturer’s own Android, not rooted

The security update is the requirement most likely to catch you out, because it is a rolling one — a device that qualifies today falls behind if it stops receiving updates. The rest of this article covers how to check it and how to fix it.

Pro Tip: Check your devices early. A device that has slipped out of date will only tell you when a customer is standing in front of you trying to pay. Once a quarter is enough for most operators, and it is worth checking before your busy season.

Step 1 — Check When Your Device Was Last Updated

  1. Open Settings on the device
  2. Go to About phone (or About device, or System)
  3. Look for Android security update, Security patch level, or System update

You will see a date, such as 1 January 2025. That is the date of the last security update the device received — not the date you last installed an app, and not the Android version number.

If you cannot find it, open Settings and use the search box at the top to search for security update.

Step 2 — Install Any Available Updates

  1. In Settings, go to System → System update (or Software update)
  2. Tap Check for updates
  3. If an update is offered, connect the device to Wi-Fi and to power, then install it

System updates are large and the device restarts partway through, so install them outside opening hours rather than between customers.

Purpose-Built POS Devices

Handheld and countertop POS devices — such as the Sunmi V3 family — run the manufacturer’s own version of Android rather than the standard build you get on a consumer phone or tablet. The manufacturer decides which updates are released and when, so these devices often behave differently from an ordinary Android phone:

  • Updates may not appear automatically, even when one exists
  • Check for updates may report that the device is up to date when it is not
  • The manufacturer may need to release an update to your specific device before it becomes available

If your POS device is out of date and no update is offered, contact the manufacturer directly and ask them to make one available. Have the device’s serial number ready — they will usually ask for it.

If the manufacturer cannot provide one — older devices eventually stop receiving updates altogether — that device will not be able to take Tap to Pay payments again. It will still sell, scan, check in and print, and you can still take card payments on it using a separate card reader, but contactless payments on the device itself will need newer hardware.

Example: Sunmi Devices

On Sunmi devices, the update date is under Settings → System → System update. The serial number is shown on the same screen, and is also printed on the back of the device.

If no update is offered there, look for the separate System Update app in your device’s app list and check there as well.

If neither offers an update and your device is out of date, contact Sunmi through the chat widget on sunmi.com with your serial number and ask whether a newer version is available for your device. They can then release one to it.

Pro Tip: A Sunmi system update can be around 2GB. Download and install it over Wi-Fi at your base, not on mobile data in the field.

FAQ

Q: Is this the same as updating the TicketingHub POS app?

No. App updates come from the Google Play Store and are separate. A device can be running the latest version of the app and still have an out-of-date version of Android.

Q: Does this affect iPhones and iPads?

No. This article covers Android devices. Keep iOS devices on a current version of iOS through Settings → General → Software Update.