Shopify Expanding Apple Pay Hardware and Software to United Kingdom

[MacRumors]

After launching its point-of-sale system app in the United States in 2013, Shopify today announced that both the company's POS app and physical hardware will finally be made available to business owners in the United Kingdom (via TechCrunch). The app and "Tap, Chip, and Swipe" card reader work in conjunction to accept various kinds of retail payments from customers, while also providing merchants with data about their business, like stock shortages and daily cash intake.

"The UK is Shopify's second largest market," Hailey Coleman, Product Growth Manager at Shopify, told TechCrunch via email. "The launch of the Shopify POS app and card reader provides small business owners an easy and secure way to accept payments anywhere. Now merchants in the UK can run their entire business with Shopify."

With its NFC-enabled card reader and connected app, Shopify allows customers to pay with any mobile wallet app, including Apple Pay and Android Pay, and traditional cards from Visa and MasterCard. On the compatability side of things, the Shopify POS app functions with the iPhone 4s and later, the iPad 2 and later, and any version of the iPad mini.

With the new system, business owners in the United Kingdom can also run every aspect of their small business with Shopify's products. The app and card reader not only enhance the retail store shopping experience, but both tie the physical store into the owner's online marketplace, "if they're using Shopify to power their e-commerce."

Merchants in the United Kingdom can pre-order the Shopify card reader for £59 while it's on sale with a £20 discount, and can expect to receive the device beginning on September 30. The company's app is free to use, but incurs a 1.6 percent credit card rate with no purchase fee. Shopify also sells a line of companion hardware to improve the transaction experience in small businesses, including a receipt printer and cash drawer that connect into the Shopify ecosystem.

Article Link: Shopify Expanding Apple Pay Hardware and Software to United Kingdom

 

[2457282]

The square POS system is so much better looking. Not sure about functionality, cost, etc, but look at square and compare to see that from an Apple aesthetics perspective, square is way better.

 

[Wilson1313]

Slow day in news, ehh?

 

[lionsy]

As long as you don't have your heart set on the prospect of having to have an iPad involved, at least in the UK, there are a lot of cheaper ways to get a terminal in your shop. And they'll already include a built in thermal printer and what not. If you want the full solution this is pretty expensive, you're definitely just paying for looks with this thing.

Depending on your business' income you can probably just get the card terminal for free, that's what we did, then we were just paying a few pence on each transaction, the only thing that would have made it expensive was accepting American Express, but I've only ever seen an AE once and they had another card anyway.

In short, If you're a business you already have a business bank account, ask, bribe and blackmail your bank into a good deal on a terminal, it won't look as pretty but it'll (probably) do the job better.

 

[tmiw]

The square POS system is so much better looking. Not sure about functionality, cost, etc, but look at square and compare to see that from an Apple aesthetics perspective, square is way better.

Square also can't handle PIN entry, which is a bit of a problem in many other non-US countries.

As long as you don't have your heart set on the prospect of having to have an iPad involved, at least in the UK, there are a lot of cheaper ways to get a terminal in your shop. And they'll already include a built in thermal printer and what not. If you want the full solution this is pretty expensive, you're definitely just paying for looks with this thing.

Depending on your business' income you can probably just get the card terminal for free, that's what we did, then we were just paying a few pence on each transaction, the only thing that would have made it expensive was accepting American Express, but I've only ever seen an AE once and they had another card anyway.

In short, If you're a business you already have a business bank account, ask, bribe and blackmail your bank into a good deal on a terminal, it won't look as pretty but it'll (probably) do the job better.

The main advantage of something like Shopify is the integration. Having to manually enter the amount on the terminal after already having totaled it with a cash register invites mistakes; there's at least one or two news stories a year for instance about how people have accidentally been charged tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds because the cashier forgot to push Enter and the customer's PIN ended up being appended to the actual amount. It also makes accounting easier since it's all electronic already.