Point-of-sale

The future of brick and mortar retail is somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. Buried beneath a virtual sea in a place once called Xanadu is an underwater version of New York, a nautical Times Square where marquees scream “Piranha of the Opera,” and “Krill Grill.”

The fintech Sezzle has finally received its point-of-sale lending license in California after agreeing to refund consumers in the state and pay a penalty for previously making illegal loans there, the California Department of Business Oversight said Thursday.

The fintech Sezzle received its license after agreeing to refund customers and pay a fine for previously making loans that state regulators had deemed illegal.

The National Retail Federation's annual conference, taking place this week in New York, is home to many innovations that could change the way merchants accept payments.

By linking your POS to inventory management software, you can easily keep an eye on the amount of product you have and note when it’s time to restock or purchase from your distributors, says Bank of America Merchant Services' Sydney Ivey.

U.K. credit card lender NewDay, which issues co-branded cards for Amazon, Laura Ashley and Topshop, is expanding its technology offerings by acquiring installment lending platform Deko.

So far this year, Lloyds and Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks have had payment failures in the U.K. And in the U.S., a software glitch at parking technology vendor Parkeon halted digital payments at meters in New York and other cities.

The thinking has been that additional POS complexity is the only way to give customers what they want and streamline business operations. Yet a typical merchant uses less than 20% of the capability of their POS solution—and not often very well, says Revel Systems' Chris Lybeer.

A California regulator on Monday denied a lending license to the point-of-sale financier Sezzle in a detailed written decision that could have broader consequences for upstart consumer lenders.

In the same manner as customer-interaction tools can integrate into a point-of-sale terminal, NCR Corp. is ready to turn the POS screen into a virtual business office.