If you’ve ever stood in line during a major holiday, waiting to get your gifts rung up, you know how many minutes you could spend just waiting. Take away the steep price discounts retailers offer customers during holidays and you might step out of line, leaving the gifts in an abandoned cart. Depending on how the customers in front of you pay for their purchases (i.e. check, credit card, gift card), your wait could stretch close to half an hour. It’s a reason retailers are using retail point of sale systems checkout tools more.
The trend follows the habit more consumers have of using credit cards to pay for purchases. In fact, the March 19, 2013 Resource Nation “Will Point of Sale Systems Mean the End of Cash Transactions” articles states that, “According to a 2011 survey by Javelin Strategy & Research, 54 percent of respondents said they used credit or debit cards most frequently to pay for goods and services and only 21 percent relied on cash.”
Within two short years, the numbers of people using credit cards to pay for online and offline purchases is expected to grow significantly. In fact, “the market for mobile payments for physical goods could top $170 billion in transactions, up from $60 billion in 2011, according to Bloomberg.com.” It’s these changes that decrease the need for retailers to keep large, stationary cash registers on hand, turning instead to retail point of sale systems.
One reason retail point of sale systems might help retailers to attract and retain customers has to do with the fact that, even as credit and debit card usage is expected to rise, cash transactions are also expected to grow. After all, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco expects cash transactions to grow by 1.7 percent each year, according to Resource Nation.
Mobile POS systems that are downloaded onto traditional cash registers can be used to scan bar codes, process cash transactions and swipe credit, charge and debit cards. Other features of the systems include:
- Capability of mobile point of sale applications being downloaded off secure Internet servers
- Opportunity to process customer purchases at checkout lanes, at the customer’s side right after an informative sales presentation or offsite at an outdoors event
- Ability to check sales records around the clock, even when you’re on vacation or away from home visiting family out-of-town over the weekend
- Tools to send customers shipment pick-up reminders, sales alerts, birthday greetings, etc.
- Next day hardware replacements at no additional charge
- Sales reporting and inventory tracking
- Chance to send customer’s email receipts
- Ability to synch multiple devices
Furthermore, because retail POS systems are ready for use with mobile devices like the iPad, iPhone Touch and iPod, they offer a variety of mobile options. For example, retailers who operate mobile food trucks or mobile book vans could process purchases using their personal iPad or iPhone anywhere in the world.
