TRENDING: How mPOS Keeps Food Trucks, Truckin’

Industries across the board are getting a mobile makeover.

From retailers looking to use mobile features to better appeal to tech-savvy customers to cooks looking for a new way to get their food into the hands (and mouths) of hungry consumers, mPOS innovations across a range of verticals are powering new products and offerings.

In the February edition of the mPOS Tracker , PYMNTS explores these new products and innovations from mPOS technology developers.

Around the mPOS world

Brick-and-mortar businesses are increasingly eschewing what used to be a common retail convention in favor of mobile-focused features.

That includes jewelry retailer Helzberg Diamonds, which is hoping to give customers a better in-store shopping experience through a new partnership with mobile app and software developer Mad Mobile. The app’s features include access to customer contact information, profiles, preferences, attributes, purchase history, wish lists and a loyalty program — and all through an mPOS device.

Similarly, Middle Eastern retailer Chalhoub Group has deployed the Oracle Retail Xstore point of sale (POS) in partnership with payments provider Logic Information Systems to improve its checkout experience. The redesigned look includes 60 new mobile checkout systems, and recently debuted at the company’s Dubai location.

For more of the latest notable headlines and trends from around the mPOS space, check out the Tracker’s News and Trends section.

Adding mPOS to the food truck menu

More than 4,000 food trucks in the U.S. dotted city streets across the U.S. as of 2016, bringing in more than $1 billion in revenue. As lunchtime goes mobile, so, too, are payments. Food truck owners and operators are increasingly turning to mobile solutions to help accept modern forms of payment, including mobile wallets and payment cards.

For this month’s mPOS Tracker feature story, PYMNTS caught up with a pair of food truck operators — Dana Prive, owner and operator of the Forking Awesome food truck from Manchester, New Hampshire, and Daniel Kahn, co-owner of the GreenSpace Café in Detroit, Michigan — to find out more about the mobile food and payment revolution.

Prive noted in the interview that finding success in the food truck business requires more than just serving good food at the right spot and time. It’s also accepting and evolving the business model to align with consumers’ changing payment preferences.

While some want to pay with cash, Prive said the bulk of today’s food truck customers want to pay with cards or mobile devices. Food truck vendors that don’t adapt and only accept cash risk alienating customer who would rather pay with cards.

“So, that means we need to be able to accept whatever they want to pay with and have with them,” he explained.

To read the full story, along with a ranked provider directory featuring more than 300 major players in the space — including four new entries this month — check out the February mPOS Tracker .

About The Tracker

The PYMNTS mPOS Tracker is your go-to resource for staying up-to-date on a month-by-month basis. The Tracker highlights the contribution of different stakeholders, including institutions and technology coming together to make this happen.