POS Systems Bridging On and Offline

New of Sale Point Systems Software Blurs Online and Offline Payments

David S. Evans, a professor at both the University CollegeLondon and the University of Chicago Law School, was the keynote speaker lastThursday at Chicago's Federal Reserve-hosted annual payments conference, andsaid that innovate software platforms that can be developed and rolled out in ashort amount of time are the future of point of sale systems and the way wetake payments. Listing companies like Square Inc. (created by a co-founder ofTwitter), PayPal Inc. and smaller, Denver-based IP Commerce Inc., Evans, who'salso the founder of the Market Platform Dynamics consulting firm, said thatthey were leaders in the POS systems software surge that would eventually meanonly 5 to 10 different software systems will eventually be used for allsystems, but will provide and endless numbers of uses for both people andbusinesses.

Evans said that PayPal was the first on that path with itsPayPal X POS systems platform, but that others may catch up and compete. ThePayPal X system allows 3rd party developers to create applications based onPayPal's code. Six months later, over 25,000 applications have been created forthe system. This brings to mind the Apple iPhone and iTouch systems, where 3rdparty developers were allowed and encouraged to create applications for theformat, and now there are thousands and thousands of Apps in Apple's officialstore, offering the programs.

IP Commerce, according to Evans, has a platform in the worksand Square, a company that's not even 6 months old yet, has an iPad/iPhone/iPodsystem that it's building software for currently, that's expected to be a bigplayer in the market. Also, though less talked about than Apple's offerings,Google's Android platform also has developers busy at work.

With all the software developers working on one or moreplatforms and feverishly creating applications for those platforms, Evan saysthe innovation in business POS systems over the next decade will be "massive." He also saysthat online and offline payments will be blurred with the next innovations.People creating physical, real-world transactions will use online paymentprocessing more. An example of this already happening is the websiteRentalic.com. People can use the site to rent items like lawn mowers or otherproperty to neighbors, family or friends and accept rental payments throughPayPal on their website.

Dan Schatt, a PayPal panelist at the event, said he doesn'tsee PayPal as a traditional point of sale systems operator. But he agreed that the new technology, software and innovations werechanging the industry of retail and business POS systems. Though they weren'taiming directly for physical point of sale applications, they were being pulledin ways they hadn't anticipated with the growth of the company.

Other technologies at the conference related to POS includedsystems that handle mobile remote deposit captures that allowed people to usetheir smart phones to take photographs and checks and send the photos to bedeposited into the bank instead of the actual checks.