The retail Point of Sale market is growing fast. An estimate by Global Market Insights expects that growth to push the industry from its current $15 billion to $45 billion by 2024. This exciting growth always brings with it new technologies and capabilities. That being said, an array of technologies that already exist are helping to push that growth forward, while simultaneously changing customers’ expectations of what it means to pay for their purchases.
New tech is continually opening up small businesses to new markets, while also paving the way to better serve their current customers. Integrated payment solutions, which are used by roughly 25% of small and medium businesses, are creating the ability to easily reach new people. Poynt mobile POS, which we at Moolah have partnered with to offer free Smart Terminals to those who sign up for a Merchant account, offers an ideal example. It announced recently a partnership with AliPay, the payment company owned by China’s largest eCommerce company, Alibaba. This powerful partnership makes it possible to accept payments from the roughly 520 million registered Alipay users, making the shopping experience of tourists traveling to North America just a little bit easier.
NFC-enabled payments are rising in prominence, with about 18% of businesses saying that they offer the technology. For some, NFC is changing the meaning of face-to-face payments. Some larger restaurants are equipping each of their tables with a POS that can facilitate the ordering process, and accept an NFC payment right then and there. Still, just because you’re using fancy new tech doesn’t mean that the face-to-face interaction isn’t crucial. For those that like to include a human “face” in the process, Poynt can go wireless, allowing a server to go to the customer’s table and process a payment while the customer is seated, offering the convenience of NFC, or other payment, along with the comfort of an employee’s guidance.
It’s estimated that around 14% of SMBs are using payment-enabled mobile phones to process payments. This may seem a little low, but the smart phone payment system is comparatively niche, in that the odds are you are using one because the nature of your business requires you to accept payments on the go. The mobile is less convenient when you have a counter and a lot of payments to process. Still, the functions that mobile payments add to your repertoire can be wonderfully useful, such as cloud-based tracking of sales, which can make data across a whole mobile sales team instantly available.
Some of the above functions are made possible with the Poynt mobile POS. Other functions are made more convenient by having a great merchant account provider, like Moolah. What they all share in common is that they’re growing.