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 to store that data locally. No backing up, no expensive local storage and no expensive systems to purchase. This is a transformation that will level the playing field for small to medium sized merchants who previously could not afford smart, modern transaction solutions.
As tablets and smartphones become the new computing devices for small to medium sized merchants, it is Commerce that is the next Cloud based disruption arena.
When it comes to cloud commerce, the revolution has begun with GoPago, Square, Revel, Shopkeep, POS Lavu, Leaf and NCR Silver leading the charge.
GoPago LIVE utilizes cloud technology for complete commerce offering seamless access across our product suite. This allows merchants to upload their menu once into the cloud, where it is then instantly and continuously available across devices. All of our platforms have access to the same items, updates and “brain” whether by tablet, smartphone or on the web.
Let’s think of a business owner with five pizzeria locations. On the rare occasion that the owner gets a vacation, they will still have all the same access to the transactions of their business from anywhere on any connected device. The owner can sit on the beach and log into the GoPago portal on their smartphone or tablet and check daily sales; by location, by terminal, by day and by hour. There is no need to check in with every acting manager on duty to see how business was this morning or yesterday, because they can watch orders come in, get smart reports and view robust graphs and data.
“Guesstimating” when it comes to real business decisions and inventory management just got easier thanks to the power to access important data from anywhere, anytime.
GoPago capitalizes on the certainty that cloud based commerce, constantly connected computing and communicating, is the future for merchants!
What do you think? Please comment and join the conversation.