Players continue to zig and zag around the mPOS space yet common themes are beginning to emerge. The March mPOS Tracker highlights the five key things that all successful – and scalable mPOS solutions have. Want to see if your solution makes the cut?
The theme for March and mPOS was … distribution. Distribution that came in the shape of partnerships and those that came in the form of platform enhancements (e.g. SDK’s and APIs) that open existing platforms for others to leverage. Distribution is about achieving scale, and scale is about getting more volume – and the larger players in the space have scale and volume in their sights. What’s interesting about many of these partnerships is the extent to which they are now embedding digital wallets into POS systems to enable acceptance of mobile payments – not just card payments. Both Revel Systems and Square accept card payments, but are emphasizing integration with mobile wallets in order to accelerate payment using mobile apps and wallets. The other interesting observation is the extent to which the mPOS emphasis is also on those in the services business. Several players, including a large supplier/platform are focused on the SMB market in order to accelerate cash flow by accepting card payments for services instead of checks after an invoice has been generated and mailed. New research out of Australia shows that more than 60 percent of SMBs don’t offer credit card options. Solutions that bundle equipment costs with the cost of processing and make it affordable for small businesses with bigger tickets to use card processing seem to be emerging and taking root. But, having monitored and organized the mPOS ecosystem for the past 15 months, we believe that we are in a unique position to identify the 5 critical characteristics that mPOS players must now have to scale:
Five new players joined the MPOS Tracker ranks this month: BeanStream Mobile, Globe Change, MicroBiz, MYOB Pay. The report also provides updates for seven existing players in the mPOS space, including Ezetap, iZettle, I Love Velvet, Payleven, Revel and Square. It also updates three 3 suppliers: ROAM, Infinite Peripherals and Swiff.
To see the full mPos Tracker report, click here.