Is now the time to make the mPOS move?

Mobile Point of Sale is hardly new, but with retail having undergone a rapid shift in terms of delivery and customer expectation in 2020, it begs the question is now the time to make the mPOS move?

Here’s an insight into the benefits of mPOS and how it can assist your retail outlet embrace the changed playing field post Covid-19.

Mobile Point of Sale has been rapidly gaining popularity over recent years. This is largely due to its relative affordability compared to legacy Point of Sale and the ability to cut the queue for customers.

But in a post Covid-19 age even further advantages of mPOS have become apparent, including taking the register to the customer and the facilitation of contactless payments.

So, let’s walk through just some of the advantages mPOS offers in the shifted world of post-Covid retail.

In an era where social distancing is now front of mind for many consumers, the lengthy queue is well and truly a thing of the past.

Due to its inherent mobility, mPOS allows retailers to rethink the traditional queue, taking the register to the customer in-store.

Not only does a mobile register accommodate social distancing requirements, it also enables retailers to provide seamless, personalised customer service at a time when every interaction with a customer counts.

The sheer practicality of ordering online then collecting in-store (aka Click and Collect) has seen this emerge as a major trend in retail over recent years. Covid-19 accelerated this movement even further, with customers relying on click and collect to avoid entering the physical store.

Although physical retail is experiencing a rebound, this trend looks set to stay, and mPOS offers a wealth of features to assist.

The mobility of the mPOS system allows attendants to quickly check off orders, while the Cloud-based inventory information ensures accuracy when it comes to reconciling online orders and in-store purchases.

In other words, mPOS helps ensure the stock a retailer claims to have is actually available for the customer when they arrive to pick it up.

Contactless payments have experienced a massive spike throughout the period of Covid-19 and they’re likely to continue to gain momentum over the period ahead.

That means retailers need to be increasingly flexible in the payment options they offer, accommodating tap ‘n’ go card payments, digital wallets and more.

These days mPOS offers nifty ways to integrate payment processing terminals with hardware like tablets, making it even easier to accept cashless payments on the retail floor, in the pop-up shop and beyond.

Covid-19 has seen retailers forced to get creative when it comes to accommodating their customer. And one way some are thinking outside the box is via pop-up shops.

Whether it’s purely a site where customers can pick up online orders or a store that allows retailers to test the waters in a changed retail environment, pop up shops or distribution centres allow retailers to affordably accommodate their customer.

mPOS assists by offering a payment and Point of Sale system that is affordable, mobile and can be connected to a store’s overall POS system, without requiring expensive set-up or cumbersome hardware.

Hard copy receipts are rapidly becoming a thing of the past as customers move away from physical items they have to touch.

Again, mPOS offers the ability to email or SMS receipts rather than printing them out. Ultimately this offers greater convenience to the consumer in terms of record keeping, but also saves the retail outlet the expense of printing items out.

Vitag now offers an innovative mPOS hardware range known as NE360 that accommodates any device, any payment, anywhere.

Renowned as the ultimate universal mPOS system, NE360 offers the complete freedom to combine any tablet or mobile device, any payment terminal and any operating system to create a flexible, cost-effective and scalable mPOS solution.

NE360 range offers complete versatility including:

• A full mPOS terminal complete with stand, payment processor cradle, discreet cable management, integrated charging, and the option to go handheld when you need
• Universal mobile smartphone enclosure with payment processor cradle
• Universal mobile tablet enclosure with payment processor cradle

You can learn more about the NE360 range and how it can assist your retail outlet here.