Removing the Fog: What Cloud Based POS Really Means

The buzzword “Cloud” is the center of enormous press, the basis for numerous Silicon Valley startups and is surfacing in a variety of emerging technologies, however, what impact will it have for the payments industry? In terms of commerce, the Mobile POS Market Survey by IHL reports that by 2015, traditional POS sales will drop by more than 13% due to the rise in mobile POS systems powered by the cloud. An additional IHL report states by 2015, 2.7 million tablets will be shipped per year to retail and hospitality venues. This shift will account for a growth rate of approximately 450 percent in just three years. While traditional POS systems cost thousands of dollars and can become instantly obsolete; could the cloud’s strong processing power and instant data storage/retrieval insure that cloud based merchant POS systems are future-proofed businesses? Think of the impact of Netflix and Spotify on your CD and DVD collections. No longer do you have to have physical goods for music and the movies. Vastly larger content libraries are now accessible in your home or as you travel on tablets and smartphones; they no longer need to be purchased and locally stored. Now think about that concept with data generated by transactions… Full cloud computing, with large and distributed cloud based computing systems, can offer more power, uptime and access to unlimited amounts of data with faster responses and virtual access from anywhere. Wow… The advantages of cloud computing are making more affordable devices (compared to a PC) like tablets and smartphones very powerful as they can access unlimited data, really fast,  without the need...

The Future of POS is Open Platform and Integration

While attending the NRA (National Restaurant Association) Show in Chicago last week it became crystal clear what restaurants want: integration in the technology they adopt. Our booth was centrally located in the technology pavillion of the show where bulky legacy point of sale systems were replaced with sleek sophisticated tablet-based POS solutions. These cutting edge cloud-based systems and mobile applications were neighbors during the four day show and it got attendees to wonder: can they have the best of all worlds in one system for their restaurant? Thankfully, for restaurateurs and merchants, the future for integration is looking bright. GoPago is deliberately moving to an open platform. At the prestigious Google i/o Conference earlier this month, it was announced that we have integrated with Google Wallet. The Google Wallet Instant Buy API is available on the GoPago app on Android devices, so now GoPago LIVE can accept Google Wallet payments alongside mobile orders and payments. Through our own SDK (software development kit) we will be providing API libraries and developer tools to build, test and debug apps for GoPago LIVE. Through opening our platform, we get to extend the value for our merchants with the best industry apps developed by domain experts. With this openness, a sit down restaurant may want to use their favorite reservation app and have it integrated on their smart POS system, GoPago LIVE. We are very aware of the highly competitive nature in the industries that we occupy, but we do believe that the winners will be those who work together and don’t position themselves as an all or nothing solution. During the conference,...

mPOS: Our Latest Disruptive Device For QSRs

We will unveil our mPOS solution as the latest addition to our commerce in the cloud product suite at the National Restaurant Association (NRA) show. The mPOS has all the power of GoPago LIVE’s tablet POS on a smartphone that enables line busting by pushing point of sale to the edge of brick and mortar restaurants. “Traditional costs for mPOS solutions are over a thousand dollars and with technology changing so fast, hardware is obsolete in a year; hefty monthly maintenance costs have those solutions a non-starter,” said GoPago Founder and CEO Leo Rocco. “For a little over $1 a day (all in), a QSR can enable their employees with a smartphone to streamline the order taking and payment process. QSRs no longer have to run to the kitchen to communicate what they just wrote down on paper or be limited to a central POS station to accept payments. GoPago LIVE mPOS allows restaurants to turn tables over faster and provide responsive customer service.” Our new mPOS will debut on the Nexus 4 with a card reader, rugged case and with our POS software already loaded for $49 a month. The mPOS offers flexible connectivity for merchants via WiFi with the option to upgrade to a 4G data plan. “Green” flexibility is offered when customers can choose to have their receipts texted or emailed and for merchants who desire, printed wirelessly via Bluetooth. QSRs can especially benefit from this solution because the mPOS connects to a merchant’s personal commerce cloud with robust reporting across terminals and locations accessible on any device at any time. This POS on a smartphone...

GoPago LIVE: Pioneering “Solution as a Service” in Commerce

Pictured above from left to right: David Herzog, VP of Partnerships and Alliances; Martina Plaza, Office Manager;  Leo Rocco, Founder & CEO; Kelsey Mitchell, Program Manager; and Steve Elefent, Chief Strategy Officer A year ago yesterday, Tech Republic published an article about an emerging trend, Solution as a Service, which could take over the other SaaS (Software as a Service). The article pointed to this new trend as a “revolution in a revolution” and as something that “would start with traditional Internet-related problems (such as search or content distribution)” and later move to other verticals. While attending the Electronic Transaction Association Expo these last few days, it became evident that there is evolution from Software as a Service to a Solution as a Service approach in the payments space. GoPago LIVE, our total commerce in the cloud product suite, is a comprehensive, bundled solution that stretches beyond software. It integrates all the hardware, software, and internet connectivity, while providing customer service that is both predictive for the merchant (eliminating system downtime) and proactive for future needs. Leo Rocco, GoPago Founder and CEO, stated, “There’s a big idea of evolving the paradigm of ‘Software as a Service’ to ‘Solution as a Service.’ The solution includes hardware, software, 4G data connectivity and best in class customer service; that’s our package and I believe that’s where the industry needs to go.” This change means that merchants will no longer have to invest large upfront licensing and maintenance fees for software from one company and pay additional large upfront costs in hardware from another company. An upfront licensing fee for POS software can...

GoPago LIVE’s Killer Mobile Payment and Ordering App

Mobile payments are estimated to hit one trillion dollars by 2015. Fortunately, we equip our merchants with the technology to accept this influx of capital. Each and every one of our GoPago LIVE point of sale systems comes integrated with the mobile storefront allowing merchants to receive both mobile orders and mobile payments from their customers’ smartphones. The GoPago app, which has been downloaded by more than 100,000 people in San Francisco, allows customers to browse, order and pay from a merchant on their phone before they arrive at the location. This ability to save time and skip the line streamlines the whole transaction process for both merchants and for consumers. Lou’s Cafe has been using the mobile storefront to broadcast their business to their customers’ iPhones and Androids for nearly a year. Through the implementation of the GoPago mobile app, Lou’s Cafe reports an average of 15 mobile orders per day. Employees say that GoPago saves them at least an hour a day because they get to spend less time answering the phones and managing the lunch rush lines. Furthermore, the customers experience increased satisfaction and visit more often as a result of the efficiency. Nearly half of their GoPago users are repeat customers who “feel like VIP when they skip the line and are recognized by name” according to T.J., manager of Lou’s Cafe. Through the tablet Lou’s Cafe can message their customers and notify them what time their order will be ready, push rewards and discounts and send them special personalized messages. The operational improvement is so significant that T.J. has said, “If we could, we’d...

Case Study: GoPago LIVE the Perfect POS Solution for Kentucky’s Piper’s Cafe

Everyone at the San Francisco GoPago headquarters is familiar with Piper’s Cafe and the owner, Chip Adkins. He was one of the first to sign up for GoPago LIVE and has provided our customer support, marketing and engineering teams with great feedback, praise and suggestions. His contributions have been invaluable. As a startup looking to provide the best POS system for all brick and mortar merchants, there’s nothing more important to us than engaged customers who partner with us to improve our product and service.  We welcome and encourage that level of feedback from all our GoPago Live users: enterprise corporate cafeterias, food trucks and small mom and pop shops. Here is an in-depth look as to why Piper’s Cafe in Kentucky chose GoPago LIVE as their solution to transact and interact with their customers. Piper’s Cafe in Covington, Kentucky, took five years of planning and dreaming before Chip Adkins and Charles Killian were able to make it a reality. They wanted the whole cafe and the whole customer experience to be different, new and totally in line with the future. From their homemade ketchup to their locally sourced ingredients everything had to be well thought out and have their seal of approval. The point of sale system was a vital component in their plan. A simple cash register would never cut it. Dumb, old fashioned technology would hold back the promise of their vision. Originally leaning towards Square, because of fixed rates and sleekness of a tablet POS; they wanted more in a POS solution. They wanted the ability to broadcast their business to their customers smartphones and...