MPOS Tracker® March 31, 2013

March 31, 2013

This monthly report is designed to organize the mobile point of sale ecosystem, one that has emerged over the last several years as smartphones and tablets deliver new point of sale acceptance capabilities for all categories of merchants. This report provides an initial overview of those players who have entered this space, including a description of their capabilities, solution features and functions and customer and go to market priorities. This report organizes the ecosystem into two broad categories: those merchant-facing organizations who supply devices to merchants directly and those who “power” those players and supply them with the MPOS hardware, software, tools and services that helps merchant-facing organizations meet their customer needs.

 


Our initial exercise in October 2012 was intended simply as a way to assemble an ecosystem that is experiencing explosive growth. Based on market feedback, however, it has become a whole lot more. The MPOS Tracker is a useful framework for not only segmenting players by solution functionality and capability, but in assessing how these players are positioned in the market and how that is likely to evolve. And, since our launch, we’ve witnessed a lot of that evolution: we’ve doubled the number of new players that we have added to the MPOS Tracker, many of whom have shifted between layers of the pyramid as their solutions become more robust and their ambitions to serve larger merchants with more sophisitcated needs arise.

February 2013’s report features nine new players to the MPOS Pyramid, including one “powered by” supplier. The new merchant facing players are Circle it Up, Cube, Miura Shuttle, MTS, Nedbank, Payfirma, Revel Systems and YES Bank. The one powered by supplier is Payworks.

In addition, we’ve updated quite a few players from prior months. They include the following eight merchant facing players: iZettle, KWI Cloud 9, mPowa, Shopkeep, SumUp, Square, Payleven and PayPal Here, as well as one powered by supplier, ROAM.

If the big takeway in January’s report was that value-added was in, the big takeaway in February is that an awful lot of that value is taking the form of bundled solutions that make it easy for merchants to buy.

Click here to download the March 2013 MPOS Tracker report.

PAST MPOS TRACKER REPORTS

Click here to download the February 2013 MPOS Tracker report.

Click here to download the January 2013 MPOS Tracker report.

Click here for the full 2012 MPOS Tracker report.


It is worth noting that this ecosystem is moving quickly and this report is by no means complete. Information about these players is available in varying degrees of completeness. Details about volumes and shipments – the information that everyone finds most valuable – is not publicly available. We plan to update this report on a monthly basis to include new entrants, and updates on the players profiled in the prior month’s report. We are also in the process of compiling and will report out aggregated information about shipments and volumes. We encourage you to contact us at mobilepos@pymnts.com if you would like to be included in this report and/or would like us to update your information as we have presented it.


JANUARY 2013 MPOS PYRAMID