Dec 28, 2012, 4:12pm

PYMNTS.com, the premier source of news and commentary on innovation in payments, and ROAM, a pioneer in the mobile POS space, today published the December update to their guide to the mobile point of sale ecosystem. The MPOS Tracker, designed to offer an organizing framework for evaluating the many players that have enter the MPOS sector, has added 6 new players to the MPOS Pyramid: Adyen Shuttle; Corduro; CHARGE Anywhere; MRL Posnet; Sales Vu and Swish and 7 updates: Intuit, iZettle, Payleven, Shopkeep, Square, SumUp and AnywhereCommerce.

Some of the key findings in the December report include:

• SAIL lost its wind. The big news in December was VeriFone’s decision to pull back from its SAIL offering seven months after its launch, citing poor product economics.
• Core MPOS solutions are being commoditized. It isn’t sufficient anymore to introduce a solution that just offers card acceptance. Even though many of the MPOS offerings still target small merchants, they’re targeting small merchants and not casual sellers – and those merchants want and need more functionality, whether that is back office functionality, industry-specific functionality and/or the ability to integrate with existing systems.
• MPOS is no longer just a retail proposition, although that remains the majority of the focus. Solutions targeting enterprises with consumer interaction – hospitals, universities, governments – are beginning to emerge.
• MPOS is going vertical. More and more, it seems, existing payments players are adding MPOS to their own platform capabilities, enabling them to capture more revenue and customer potential, but also enrich and differentiate their MPOS solutions with the capabilities that exist in their platform.
• iOS rules as the MPOS device of choice, at least for now. The fragmentation of the Android operating system makes it more challenging for providers to provide support beyond iOS at launch.

In a podcast with Karen Webster, CEO of Market Platform Dynamics, Ken Paull CEO at ROAM discussed some of the most relevant changes in the MPOS landscape in the past month, including VeriFone’s decision to discontinue SAIL. According to Ken, “You can’t be everything to everyone, to make good hardware, good software, a good mobile platform, do solid customer acquisition, and all the things that work with it: those are too many core competencies to think that you can do all yourself. I think that’s just too much for someone to take on, and I’m surprised that Verifone did attempt to take it on.”

The entire podcast can be listen here

December’s 25-page report can be found here: http://pymnts.com/mpos-tracker/

Updates related to the player profiles and capabilities are welcome and should be directed to mobilepos@pymnts.com.

About PYMNTS.COM

PYMNTS.com is reinventing the way in which companies in payments share relevant information about the initiatives that shape the future of commerce and make news. This powerful B2B platform is the #1 site for the payments industry by traffic and the premier source of information about “what’s next” in payments. C-suite and VP level executives read it daily for these insights, making the PYMNTS.com audience the most valuable in the industry. It provides an interactive platform for companies to demonstrate thought leadership, popularize products and, most importantly, capture the mindshare of global decision-makers. It’s where the best minds and best content meet on the web.

About ROAM

ROAM helps merchants get to market quickly with secure, cost effective and powerful mobile point of sale solutions, regardless of the technology environment. ROAM’s “powered by” commerce platform provides the hardware peripherals, applications, tools and services to channel partners who want their merchant customers to realize the benefits of using mobile to reinvent their interactions with their customers and to create new business efficiencies. Founded in 2005, ROAM is a pioneer in the mobile POS space, having produced and distributed the industry’s first secure reader and today powers mobile point of sale solutions for many of the leading players in this space, globally. A privately held U.S. corporation, ROAM is majority owned by Ingenico (Euronext: FR0000125346 – ING), the world’s leading provider of payment solutions. For more information, visit www.roamdata.com.