Square Aims to Replace POS Terminals

Square has been growing fast, but now is launching "Square Register," a replacement point of sale terminal for retailers. Some will point out that "replace the merchant terminal" strategies are inherently difficult, as merchants generally have proven highly resistant to payment schemes that require them to change out their POS terminals.

Still, Square's approach aims at "adding more value," particularly by enhancing a retailer's relationship with paying customers. The approach might not get traction, but it illustrates an important element of the evolving mobile payments space, namely that the actual transaction is only part of the total value proposition.

Historically, Square’s readers always stored every purchaser’s receipt for merchants and allowed merchant’s to send a copy of the receipt to the purchaser via SMS and email. It was fairly simple.

Now, using Square Register, merchants can access Google Analytics style data with an inventory angle, such as how many units of a certain type of product were sold, and to which types of customers.

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