5 Decision Criteria To Know Before You Recommend An mPOS
By Jeremy Fried, Systems Architect, Shift4 Corporation
With a plethora of mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solutions on the market today, finding the one that will best suit your clients’ particular needs can be challenging. A solution may have everything they need — except that one crucial element. Or there are five solutions that all seem to satisfy their RFP, and it’s tough to figure out how to choose from among them. However, if you focus on what truly matters, what constitutes a non-negotiable feature, you will be far more likely to help them make the best choice the first time. Below are five such features to consider in the evaluation process.
Security: When introducing new technologies into a merchant environment, we all know payment security is paramount — the single most important factor to consider in prospective mPOS solutions. You can have the most innovative, flashy payment processing solution, but none of that matters if it isn’t secure.
Look for a solution that will enable your customers to protect payment information, no matter what. With security solutions like tokenization and point-to-point encryption (P2PE), a competitive mPOS solution will ensure they never store, process, or transmit sensitive payment card data, protecting their brand from the damaging effects of a data breach.
Customer Experience: Best-in-class businesses understand they need a mobile-first mindset. Consumers expect to be able to pay anywhere, anytime. In addition to a standard brick-and-mortar store or restaurant, places like kiosks, concert venues, and food trucks are becoming perfect locations for mobile revenue centers. Consumers have countless choices when it comes to their purchasing decisions, and employing an mPOS solution that makes the payment process simpler, more convenient, and flexible for them will go a long way toward ensuring they’re spending those dollars with your customer’s business.
Scalability And Flexibility: Scalability is important, because today’s single shingle may be tomorrow’s global corporation. For larger businesses, merchants need a mobile solution that can handle the scale and volume of their enterprise and allows them to manage their various revenue centers from one convenient account.
Whatever the size of the business, merchants need an mPOS solution that allows them to conveniently monitor and manage their system anywhere, anytime. A flexible solution should make it easy for them and their managers to quickly add or disable any employee’s access and permissions. It should enable merchants to view and report on transaction data in real time.
Versatility: The bank and/or processor your customer would like to use comes into play when selecting a mobile payment solution. Some mPOS systems pigeonhole merchants into using a specific bank, processor or both. Business needs constantly change and evolve over time, so being stuck with a specific bank or processor means they may be unable to negotiate for the best rates and services as their objectives shift. Your best bet is to recommend choosing an mPOS solution that is bank and processor neutral, as well as device agnostic.
For instance, the needs of a resort hotel’s reservation desk staff will differ from the needs of those selling drinks at the pool. Merchants need a solution that enables them to customize the configurations of each revenue center with countless combinations of devices, banks, and processors. When selecting an mPOS, having the freedom to set up each terminal with the hardware and bank/processor relationship that works best for each of the various revenue centers is critical. Being able to use their existing payment devices means your customers save hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars that would have gone toward uprooting their payment infrastructure and starting from scratch.
Adaptability: Customization of mobile payments is important so merchants can get just what they need. A truly customizable mPOS solution will allow merchants to get as in-depth as they need to, or keep things simple. A small boutique may only need to account for one state tax; by contrast, a large restaurant chain requires different tax rates applied to items like alcohol, gift cards, and food. Merchants with complex menu items may need the ability to add modifiers, such as cooking instructions (rare, medium rare, burned to a crisp, etc.) and include notes for things like food allergies. And what about customizing default tip settings? An mPOS solution with such a flexible feature set can easily grow with the business.
Choosing an mPOS solution is a significant undertaking. It must be approached with a clear understanding of what providers offer and what your customers’ particular business needs are — both now and in the future. The choices can seem overwhelming, but helping customers focus on the above five criteria will help them save time, money, and headaches.
Jeremy Fried is a serial entrepreneur with a proven background in software architecture and development, with over eight years of experience in the finance and electronic payment industries. Jeremy joined Shift4 in 2010 and is the overall architect for Shift4’s award-winning VT4® mobile point-of-sale system. VT4 was built to challenge the status quo, fill in the gaps that exist in mixed-solution environments, and address the often-overlooked mobile needs of enterprise-level merchants. Jeremy continues to oversee the growth and expansion of VT4 as Shift4’s Systems Architect,