Cash Registers Changing in Era of Mobile Payments
The emergence of tablet computers is encouraging businesses to install more aesthetically sophisticated and practical cash registers, including devices that can swivel around or hang on the wall, iPad enclosures fashioned from bamboo, and other designs that seek to eliminate the registers’ clunky appearance while making them more flexible and user-friendly. For example, Seattle’s Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream has replaced its registers with six Apple iPads that sit on handcrafted plywood pedestals that boast an engraved store logo. Meanwhile, Portland, Ore.-based Coco Donuts hangs iPad registers on a wall track, and employees slide them over to customers at the counters. The new designs dovetail with new payment technologies that turn mobile devices into on-the-fly registers. In addition, Coco Donuts owner Ian Christopher notes the new registers are about 20 percent less costly than his old systems in terms of credit card transaction fees. Receipt printers and cash drawers also may eventually become redundant as electronic payments via smartphones and other devices become the norm. For example, Nordstrom is replacing cash registers in all of its outlets and processing payments from customers using iPod Touches.
From “With Tablets, Businesses Ring Up at More Fanciful Cash Registers”
New York Times (04/22/13) Wingfield, Nick