This is an interesting question. We take call-in orders as well and haven't ever had an issue with "no card present" chargebacks (at least not yet, knock on wood!). Have you had a large issue with no shows? If not, I might be willing to run the risk of not taking a card over the phone (we often don't, just because it takes so much time). If you feel like you have to take payment over the phone, I'd probably make it a practice to explicitly ask "Do we have permission to run the card without you present?" so they have to affirm that they know it's happening.
I was just looking at the "Save Ticket" function in our POS to see if there was a way to attach a card to an order without closing it out -- similar to starting a tab at a bar where they swipe your card but don't charge it until the end. It doesn't seem that there is, although that would be a helpful solution -- that way you could take the card info for some security, but wait until they're present to verify the card number and have them sign. Does anyone know if that's a function that's already possible or in the works for tickets? (Maybe it's possible with Square for Restaurants?)
