VeriFone Systems and Lenovo have joined hands to offer mobile point of sale (mPOS) platform.
The new platform is powered by Windows 8 Pro.
Retailers will benefit as the mPOS platform will enable them to transition to an mPOS platform that works with their existing multichannel management, store operations, e-commerce, merchandising, financials, and supply chain management.
The mPOS platform integrates a ThinkPad Tablet 2 based on the Intel Atom Z2760 processor with VeriFone’s securePAYware Mobile technology designed for the Lenovo tablet.
Recently, Ovum said the economics of the mPOS market mean that the number of products and services available is unsustainable in the longer term. Micro-merchant SMEs are the core target market for providers, so transactions are more likely to be low value and infrequent.
With such pressure on mPOS providers to keep processing fees competitive, they have little scope to gain significant revenue, let alone profit, on each transaction. The only way to create a financially viable business model is to rapidly gain economies of scale and ensure a significantly large end-user base.
“Retailers are increasingly eager to adopt mPOS but have been frustrated by proprietary platforms that ignore their major investments in the Windows-based point-of-sale systems on which they run their businesses,” said Joe Mach, senior vice president and general manager, Vertical Solutions for VeriFone.
Retail sales associates can use the ThinkPad Tablet 2 mPOS platform to engage customers and deliver responsive support, scan barcodes, and accept card-based payments, from anywhere in the store.
“The availability of mPOS platforms that easily integrate with existing back-end infrastructure and traditional POS systems is a must for retailers today,” said Michelle Tinsley, director, Transactional Retail, Retail Solutions Division for Intel.
Available with security solutions such as McAfee and VeriFone’s VeriShield Total Protect, Secured by RSA, for end-to-end encryption, the ThinkPad Tablet 2 mPOS platform provides data protection for acceptance of mag-stripe credit cards, signature debit, and store specialty transactions.
According to Ovum, the number of players in the market will inevitably drop as a result of this pressure on pricing. Verifone, most notably, has already left the market; it abandoned its Sail mPOS product, claiming that the high customer acquisition costs could not be justified by the thin margins from merchants with infrequent volumes and extremely high attrition rates.
“Empowering our customers to fully capture the powerful benefits of mobile and touch technology in their businesses demands tightly integrated hardware and software solutions like this ThinkPad Tablet 2 mPOS offering,” said Tom Looney, vice president, North America Relationship Business, Lenovo.
Leading retailers are piloting the VeriFone and Lenovo platform. General U.S. availability is expected in September.
