CHICAGO – Groupon is now offering restaurants, bars and cafes its Breadcrumb point-of-sale solution, a move that ties the company closer to merchants.
Groupon’s national rollout of the POS service last week comes on the heels of the company unveiling Groupon Payments, which allows merchants to accept credit cards using an iPhone or iPod touch. Breadcrumb works on an iPad. Groupon said its objective for both offerings is to cut costs for merchants accustomed to paying high prices for out-of-date payment systems.
Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com, Birmingham, Ala., told Credit Union Journal Breadcrumb is just another in a long line of rapid changes to the payments landscape that card issuers should pay attention to. “You have Groupon’s Breadcrumb, Groupon Payments, Starbucks investing $25 million in Square and announcing that they have now processed over 70 million mobile payments. You have Google testing an Adwords credit card with 1,400 businesses, and you have all sorts of mobile devices that are changing how we make purchases in retail stores. Sears and Kmart are using devices this holiday season that allow a customer to buy something from anywhere in the store rather than finding a cash register – the employee just scans the card into a handheld device right there on the spot.”
