BAR CODE READER

I Am a beginner working for the development of PoS system on java.We already developed some basic functionality and We created the application in Web Development platform using J2EE (JSP,Servlets, Apache Tomcat, MySQL).In this project we need to implement bar code and credit card processing. But discussing with some java experts we got to know that it is not possible to implement the above facilities in Web Applications. Now we are planning to convert it as JAVA SWING Application.Can any one guide me at this point.
My doubts are

1)Which one is better a swing application or web for bar code reading??
2)How can i implement bar code reader??