To the business owner of even just a decade ago, the point of sale, the area of your store that is the crux of your business in a way, would be a little difficult to recognize. The stalwart little card reader, hooked up to a phone line, with its cute rubber buttons is becoming more a relic of a bygone form of payments. Newer, smarter devices, such as the Poynt Smart Terminal, are making waves by enabling businesses to use their devices for far more than payments.
For the longest time, innovation in the point of sale was concentrated in the hardware department. The developers of the newest technologies of smart payments are focusing their creative energies on software to push businesses forward. The POS is being streamlined to the point that it resembles a tablet or smartphone, and carries with it all the potential and power of those devices. With developers creating APIs to open up software solutions to businesses, software can benefit from the flexibility of software in a benevolent feedback loop.
In that vein, the industry is also moving away from proprietary technologies and systems that try to do everything for a small business and are focusing in on what they do best. Right alongside them, more and more startup software solutions are specializing in a new niche of small business needs. While this does increase the number of companies that a business is working with, it also greatly increases the efficiency that the typical small business is taking care of its back-office tasks. Using the power of automation, hours spent on repetitive tasks can be spent elsewhere.
Smart hardware takes many shapes. For the company that wants a point of sale device that suits their needs, this is a good thing. With Poynt terminals, for example, you can take the standard approach with their Smart Terminal, which is a good size for cafes, shops, and everyday POS use. Poynt also carries the Poynt 5, which is a smaller hand-held unit that restaurants and food trucks can use well, or anyone who wants to benefit from a mobile unit with a smaller footprint.
Nobody knows what comes next in fin-tech. Still, if you leverage the flexibility of the Poynt Smart Terminal’s opensource approach, you and your business are going to be able to keep up with the times.