In the modern age of the IoT (Internet of Things), companies can no longer make products that approximate what merchants want. Businesses must innovate and release the products that merchants need right now. The reason for this is simple, the consumer of today demands a superior in-store experience and merchants must continually innovate to meet the needs and wants of their customers.
James Ritty, the inventor of Cash Registers, wanted an ‘Incorruptible Cashier’, a device that could mechanically keep a record of all cash transactions for a merchant. Over the years, merchants demanded more of the humble cash register and thus evolved the Point of Sale system.
Today, legacy POS products that run on Windows, Linux and other OS have a set of fixed functionalities. The cost to create a custom product for a merchant chain is significant, and out of reach for small medium enterprises. New, cloud-based POS systems give merchants more flexibility in terms of usage, storage and customization. However, one key element is still missing - an easy way for merchants to customize their POS, and eventually evolve and scale their POS infrastructures while their businesses grow.
Enter Verifone's Marketplace, available today on Verifone’s Carbon 8 and Carbon 10 integrated Point of Sale Devices. Verifone’s Marketplace gives merchants the ability to pick and choose the type of applications they need to customize their POS and better serve their customers. The Marketplace comes with three kinds of applications: POS, merchant and consumer apps.
POS applications
Using applications from the Marketplace a merchant can customize the check-out and payment functionality of their POS to better suit their needs. Retailers and hospitality businesses, for example, have very different requirements from their POS systems. By picking and choosing the right apps from the Verifone Marketplace, merchants can completely customize their Verifone POS to build a system that meets their requirements without investing in a bespoke solution.
Merchant applications
These applications help merchants better manage their business, as well as save time and money. Merchant apps help merchants with tasks like employee management, accounting, reporting, and business analytics. For example, there are apps on the Marketplace for inventory and employee management, and even accounting and taxation.
Consumer applications
These are applications that enhance the consumer experience and help merchants drive deeper consumer engagement. For example, merchants can download apps that enable loyalty redemption, gift card acceptance, and content management for digital promotions.
So, who builds the apps on the marketplace?
- Third-party developers: Developers apply their expertise in providing software solutions to merchants of all sizes.
- Acquirers: They leverage their close relationships with merchants to identify key areas for development.
- Tier-1 merchants: Merchants can choose to develop custom apps for their specific needs.
- Verifone: As the market-leader in payments we can use our payment technology expertise to create value-added applications and services.
Some of the key benefits of Verifone Marketplace for developers include
- Target new verticals: Leverage all the apps in Verifone Marketplace to quickly and easily create vertical-specific bundles.
- App version updates: When an updated version of an app becomes available, merchants receive an alert prompting them to update the app remotely.
- App upgrades: Enable merchants to upgrade to premium versions of apps and bundles—increasing subscription revenue without any additional effort.
- Time and cost savings: Leverage Verifone’s infrastructure to get your own marketplace up in months, instead of years, and without the expense of ongoing maintenance and development.
- Streamlined billing: We can seamlessly integrate marketplace billing into your merchant management system or completely manage the billing on your behalf.
Verifone invites third party innovators to be a part of the Marketplace experience.
Help build the next generation of applications that will power merchants going forward. Verifone provides the right tools and resources so that developers can build and go to market faster, including:
- Developer Central: With an online portal, developers can access our SDK, developer kit, and documentation, as well as publish and manage their apps on the Marketplace.
- SDK: With an easy to use Verifone plug-in for Android Studio, anyone can quickly develop both Android and Engage applications for Verifone devices.
- Developer kit: A payment terminal/device can be ordered to use for development and testing.
- Developer support: Provides access to support via mail, phone, or weekly web conference calls.
