Is Amazon the Trojan Horse Into mPOS Turf?

Welcome to the new monthly mPOS Tracker, a PYMNTS Special Report sponsored by ROAM. In this report, we rank the players that we track, and score these players based on numbers and types of devices used, geographies where solutions are implemented, the number of payment types accepted, and more.

This month’s report first highlights Amazon and its official entry into the mPOS space with Amazon Local Register. The e-commerce giant’s aim is to serve local retailers, helping them get local sales data to feed the much bigger Amazon. And perhaps, suggests MPD CEO Karen Webster, with the mPOS solution, these small online sellers that use the platform will then be able to use it offline. So does this make Amazon a Trojan horse into the territory of other mPOS players’? Or was this just a move sparked by the anticipation of Apple Pay and its opportunity to capture the local retail market?

In addition, the report indicates that while mPOS began as a solution for sellers at local marketplaces to accept cards, mPOS platform players are now leveraging their relationships with merchants and consumers for “new online opportunities to complement their offline interacting.” Bindo, for example, created a vertical marketplace to aggregate its sellers and to enable buyers to transact with them at any time.

Finally, the report brings up another topic of concern in the mPOS world: security. A seemingly ongoing series of breaches is causing the industry to more closely focus on how secure mPOS really is, as well as the best practices to go about security as cyber crooks get increasingly intelligent. For example, the Home Depot and Target breaches have shown that these crooks have the ability to use malware to get ahold of account numbers and PINs to create counterfeit cards – particularly useful in markets where EMV isn’t widespread like the U.S. Encrypted mPOS readers and a layered approach to security is therefore quickly becoming the norm.

Those who scored the highest this month were those whose platforms enable a variety of capabilities and functionalities – they have the greatest ability to support many retailers and fully monetize the mPOS ecosystem. Those players are: PayPal Here, Kalixa pro, GoPago, Adven Shuttle, Vexilor from Givex, Creditcall, and ROAM. Five new players joined the mPOS pyramid this month: Amazon Local Register, Bindo, Mercadoetecnia, Ideas y Tecnologia (miTPV), BWISE, and USA Technologies. We also provided updates to seven players: goSwiff, Leaf, NCR Silver, ROAM, ShopKeep, SumUp, and Square.

Here are the three key takeaways for this month:

1) Big players see gold in local markets. Amazon Register is the latest entrant in the “main street” retail scene with a hardware/software and payments solution that extends new value to its existing local marketplace vendors.

2) mPOS is a marketplace’s best friend. Platforms that enable local sellers to expand their reach by aggregating merchants and customers are emerging. Success depends on the uniqueness of the products or services offered by those local merchants.

3) Security has become a topic of conversation. The rash of card breaches at retailers has resurfaced the issue that was at one time a very big differentiator for mPOS players – security. However, instead of just being about the security of the reader, the conversation is focused on the layers of security at the hardware, apps, data and customer levels.

For a more detailed look at the ratings and rankings, click the download button below for a full copy of this month’s report.

THE MPOS PYRAMID SEPTEMBER 2014

Information about these players is available in varying degrees of completeness. Details about volumes and shipments – the information that everyone finds most valuable – is not publicly available. We plan to update this report on a monthly basis to include new entrants, and updates on the players profiled in the prior month’s report. We are also in the process of compiling and will report out aggregated information about shipments and volumes. We encourage you to contact us at mobilepos@pymnts.com if you would like to be included in this report and/or would like us to update your information as we have presented it.