We’ve never endorsed anything on this site but we will often post about companies or matters that we align with. Recently a site called POS Heros caught our attention as it’s attempting to make transparent the POS and payments incest.
Even neophytes know that value add software is a loser and payments is king. That’s why Toast is floating an IPO at $20B while Olo is eyeing a much more browbeaten $1-2B. But how do merchants know which POS systems are payments agnostic and which are on the far end of the extreme like Clover, Toast, Square, and others where you are mandated to use their payments processing?
POS Heros has recognized this dilemma and built a site to make this transparent. As increasing volumes of payments companies are disguising themselves as POS companies, the lines are blurring. POS Hero was developed to categorize the landscape and at least put something on the record.
We’re not endorsing their labeling but it at least gives people a starting point for a conversation. As Derrick Hess, their founder explains it, “A POS is either ‘Approved’ or ‘Denied.’ An Approved companies is one that is a payments friendly/processor agnostic. A Denied company is one that wants all the payments revenue for themself.”
Derrick shares that he has also found that some POS companies claim to be processor agnostic but immediately snipe the deal as soon as you turn your back. POS Heros has listed these companies as approved, since technically they allow different processors, but they’ve added their personal opinions to do their best and warn about these shady practices. These companies are tough to isolate so there’s an imperfect system of second hand feedback. Of course direct feedback is ideal, but it’s like herding cats when everyone and their brother (and their brother’s dog’s brother’s friend’s cousin’s pet hamster’s nephew) is building a “cloud POS”.
Every day POS Heros is investigating POS and software companies. Their directory currently holds over 1,000 different software and POS systems in 70 categories. We all know that merchants don’t self-educate and are more often to believe whomever first shows up in their door, but we are also aware that some people use our articles as reference material to help educate the market.
Maybe POS Heros can be another source for good.
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