NCR, the oldest and largest manufacturer of POS systems introduced NCR Silver in 2012 which is a service that lets merchants ring up sales on iPads and iPhones, then track and analyze their sales data at the end of the day.
The company joins a growing field of iOS-based “point-of-sale” products in a field pioneered largely by Square, but which also includes competitors like PayPal, Sail Payments and Intuit’s GoPayment. Like those services, NCR is providing merchants with a free app to use in processing and tracking payments from customers. NCR, however, appears to be leaning heavily on hardware in its business model: The company doesn’t provide a free card reader to its customers–instead it charges merchants $79 for a basic credit-card reader, or $549 for a device that scans barcodes and reads credit cards. It also sells an “iPad register bundle”–including a card reader, cash drawer, and receipt printer–for $619.
Merchants will also pay a $79-a-month fee for every iPhone and iPad they use as a register. (As part of NCR Silver’s launch, though, the first 1,000 merchants to sign up will pay a $39 monthly fee for the life of their business.) Additional iOS devices can be added for a 10-cent-fee for every transaction they process, with that fee maxing out at $29 per device.
