MPOS Tracker

This monthly report is designed to organize the mobile point of sale ecosystem, one that has emerged over the last several years as smartphones and tablets deliver new point of sale acceptance capabilities for all categories of merchants. This report provides an initial overview of those players who have entered this space, including a description of their capabilities, solution features and functions and customer and go to market priorities. This report organizes the ecosystem into two broad categories: those merchant-facing organizations who supply devices to merchants directly and those who “power” those players and supply them with the MPOS hardware, software, tools and services that helps merchant-facing organizations meet their customer needs.

Our initial exercise in October 2012 was intended simply as a way to assemble an ecosystem that is experiencing explosive growth. Based on market feedback, however, it has become a whole lot more. The MPOS Tracker is a useful framework for not only segmenting players by solution functionality and capability, but in assessing how these players are positioned in the market and how that is likely to evolve.

August’s 2013 report features six new players to the MPOS Pyramid. The new merchant facing players are 2can, AEON, Dialog, Next Gen Dine, Nomad and WALLMOB. In addition, we’ve updated seven players from prior months. They include the following merchant facing players: Adyen, Cube, iZettle, PayPal Here and Groupon; and two suppliers: ROAM and AnywhereCommerce.

One finding is that consumers really like more traditional retailers’ ability to use mPOS solutions to accommodate their check-out preferences no matter where they are in a store – and why wouldn’t they? Slightly more than half of the consumers surveyed also believe that “cash registers” as we know them will soon disappear as retailers take “check-out” into the aisles. For consumers, these sorts of innovations convey a more positive store experience, and even the perception that the retailer is tech-savvy. More than a third of the consumers in this survey say that they would recommend a retailer that uses mPOS solutions to their friends.

Another finding is that mPOS solution providers continue to emphasize their ability to accommodate a variety of third-party capabilities that make their front and back office operations more efficient. They rely on or have created software platforms that make the process efficient and cost-effective – and as we have said before, sticky. Solutions providers that can make value-added capabilities more easily available to their customers will retain those customers because they will help them grow their businesses – and increase switching costs to others.

Link pdf: http://www.pymnts.com/assets/WhitePapers/MPOSAugust13-.pdf