TSYS is responding to growing demand for a lighter and more versatile point of sale with a line of payment tools answering many of the newer merchant needs Square, Clover and Poynt typically provide.
The cloud-based Vital POS lineup includes a mobile payments solution that works with a business owner’s phone or tablet, a payment terminal designed for countertops and a payments system that can support multiple business locations, TSYS said in a Thursday press release.
All three product sets include EMV card acceptance; back-office management features such as tools for analytics and reporting; inventory and products; and handling taxes and employee schedules, TSYS said in the release.
The move enables TSYS, of Columbus, Ga., to compete more directly with a new generation of payment hardware providers like Square, which introduced handheld payment terminals supported by a range of cloud-based tools to track and manage payments with business processes. TSYS has owned its own mobile point of sale hardware since late 2012, when it purchased
Vital POS leverages technology and other elements that TSYS obtained with last year’s acquisition of
“Business owners are looking for more than just payment acceptance, and that’s what Vital delivers,” said Philip McHugh, TSYS’ senior executive vice president and president of merchant solutions, in the release.
TSYS is acting to catch up with rivals and may stem the loss of existing merchant customers by introducing a next-generation solution set, analysts said.
“Despite the power of an open market, in large part POS system sales remain a distributor-controlled item,” said Tim Sloane, director of new payments technology at Mercator Advisory Group.
