Point-of-sale

Heartland Payment Systems has purchased the mobile point of sale vendor Leaf to improve its capabilities for small businesses.

Mobile point of sale providers claim to serve the merchants that are too small for card acceptance: the gardeners, the babysitters, the flea market sellers. But this image is quickly fading as vendors pursue larger merchants, causing the upstart mPOS players to increasingly resemble the incumbents.

Mobile card readers like Square and PayPal Here must inevitably offer an EMV-chip card option to U.S. merchants, but how soon is too soon? And what are the consequences of arriving too late?

When Starbucks Corp came to market in January 2011 with its mobile payments app, there had yet to be a retailer or foodservice operator that had gained much traction with the newfangled idea of a consumer using a mobile phone to make an in-store purchase.

First Data Corp. has agreed to buy Gyft Inc., which sells digital gift cards, in a move to advance the Atlanta-based processor's mobile payment offerings.

Zing is releasing an iPad app that leverages Web hosted technology to access a large selection of business functions through the point of sale.

Happy Belly Curbside Kitchen, which operates out of food trucks, is planning to become a sit-down restaurant within the next year and is relying on mobile point of sale technology to make the transition.

Apple may have to place more emphasis on the iPad's capabilities as mobile point of sale devices to help it recover from a small but sharp decline in tablet sales.

San Francisco-based Pose, one of the many companies in the cloud-based mobile point of sale market, aims to differentiate itself by eliminating its $49 monthly subscription fee.

Cardfree, a mobile payments provider run by several of the people who designed the successful Starbucks mobile payment app, is using cloud-based technology to simplify the process of deploying its technology as it eyes international markets.

Mobile point of sale provider Appetize is targeting entertainment venues and music festivals, a niche that's often a testing ground for payments technology.

There have literally been dozens of tablet-based point of sale solutions introduced to the retail market and with reason. The demand for a better point of sale software solution has been increasing rapidly.

Powa is reaching out to individual software vendors around the world in an attempt to accelerate integration of its point of sale tools with local mobile apps.

First Data Corp. has added technology from Perka, its customer loyalty subsidiary, to its Clover Station point of sale tablets. This is the latest of several updates First Data has made to boost the appeal of its Clover offering.

Bitcoin enthusiasts are serious about Bitcoin merchant adoption, some might even say obsessed. But cryptocurrency nerds may find their obsession lucrative with BitPay's referral program.

MasterCard and Sacombank are equipping the Ben Thanh market in Vietnam with mobile point of sale capabilities, introducing digital payments to what had been a cash only market for more than a century.

DoubleBeam, a mobile commerce solutions provider, is partnering with SK Planet Inc. to integrate its Slyde beacon-enabled shopping app into the GoPago mobile point of sale system.

If Seamless Distribution AB is going to pitch U.S. merchants on being able to duplicate the successful Starbucks mobile payment experience at their businesses, its new relationship with prepaid product provider InComm potentially provides a significant boost.

For the financial and retail industries, mobile is becoming a significant part of the strategy for delivering valuable content and services to customers. Two technologies in particular are available on many of today’s smartphones and are being looked at to enhance consumer experience: Near Field Communications (NFC) and Bluetooth low energy (BLE).

First Data has launched a payments platform for online and casino-based gaming.