Last year, payments processing giant First Data quietly acquired Andreessen Horowitz-backed mobile payments startup Clover to help the company expand into point of sale for small businesses. Today, First Data is debuting its point of sale platform to small and medium-sized businesses, Clover.
As Clover founder Leonard Speiser explains that when you visit most merchants, you still see traditional point of sale terminals despite some of the other iPad-based options on the market like Square and others. The reason for this, he says, is that merchants need a full-fledged POS that includes more than just credit card processing. They need payroll integration, the ability for employees to clock in and out, the ability to track inventory and more.
“The best thing to do here is to take lessons from smartphone, and give merchants the ability to have a core register and also include apps they can integrate,” he explains. Clover aims to do for the point of sale what smartphones did for the mobile consumer, by providing a hardware-based platform where businesses can download apps to their countertop.
In terms of the hardware, Clover Station is a countertop device that includes a 11.6” touch screen, secure Android-based OS, QR and barcode scanner, Bluetooth, 802.11, Ethernet, high-speed printer and more. First Data says that setup takes 15 minutes, and clients can start using the device with inventory already loaded and its merchant account ready to accept payments.
On the software side of things, merchants can choose from apps that manage customers, inventory, analytics, employees, remote web-based management, table management and more. Other features include offline mode with ability to conduct transactions even when the Internet is down, analytics, 24
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