Point of sale at a Wal-Mart store. Wal-Mart Stores Inc (or Walmart as written in its new logo is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large discount department stores

Point of sale or point of service (POS or PoS) can mean a retail shop, a checkout counter in a shop, or the location where a transaction occurs. A financial transaction involves a change in the Status of the finances of two or more businesses or individuals More specifically, the point of sale often refers to the hardware and software used for checkouts -- the equivalent of an electronic cash register. Hardware is a general term that refers to the physical artifacts of a Technology. Point of sale systems are used in supermarkets, restaurants, hotels, stadiums, and casinos, as well as almost any type of retail establishment. Customer divider barjpg|thumb|In supermarkets sellers periodically change prices for classes of goods in response to market conditions rather than negotiating the price of each good A restaurant is a retail establishment that serves prepared Food to Customers. A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging usually on a short-term basis A modern stadium (plural stadiums or stadia in English is a place or venue for (mostly outdoor Sports Concerts or other events consisting A casino is in the modern sense of the word a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of Gambling activities

Point-of-sale technology

POS systems evolved from the mechanical cash registers of the first half of the 20th century. Examples included the NCR registers, operated by a crank, and the lever-operated Burroughs registers. NCR Corporation ( is a technology company specializing in products for the retail and financial sectors These cash registers recorded data on journal tapes or paper tape and required an extra step to transcribe the information into the retailer's accounting system.

Later cash registers moved to operation by electricity, such as the NCR Class 5 cash register. The first computer-based systems were introduced in 1973, such as the IBM 3653 Store System and the NCR 2150. International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology Other computer-based manufacturers were Regitel, TRW, and Datachecker. TRW Incorporated was an American Corporation involved in a number of businesses mostly defense-related but including Automotive, Aerospace and 1973 also brought about the introduction of the UPC/EAN Barcode readers for POS systems. The Universal Product Code ( UPC) is a barcode symbology (ie a specific type of Barcode) that is widely used in the United States and A European Article Number ( EAN) is a barcoding standard which is a Superset of the original 12-digit Universal Product Code (UPC system A bar code (also barcode) is an optical Machine-readable representation of data In 1986, the IBM 4683 introduced PC-based POS systems.

During the late 1980s and 90s, manufacturers developed stand-alone credit card devices to easily and securely add credit card processing to POS systems. Some popular models include the VeriFone Tranz 330, Hypercom T7 Plus, and Lipman Nurit 2085. VeriFone is a company that makes point-of-sale equipment. They were founded and incorporated in Hawaii in 1981 and named themselves after their first product the These relatively simple devices have evolved to handle multiple applications (credit card processing, gift card activation, age verification, employee time tracking) on one device. Scrip is any Substitute for Currency which is not Legal tender and is often a form of credit. Some wireless POS systems for restaurants not only allow for mobile payment processing, they also allow servers to process the entire food order right at tableside. Mobile payment (also referred to as mobile web payment or WAP billing is the collection of money from a consumer via a mobile device such as their Mobile phone, SmartPhone

Most retail POS systems do much more than just "point of sale" tasks. Even for smaller tier 4 & 5 retailers, many POS systems can include fully integrated accounting, inventory management, open to buy forecasting, customer relation management (CRM), service management, rental, and payroll modules. Due to this wide range of functionality, vendors sometimes refer to POS solutions as retail management software or business management software.

The latest development in the POS industry is in biometrics. In 2000, Food Service Solutions, a software developer & hardware integrator with headquarters in Altoona, PA, was the first to successfully introduce a biometric POS system into school lunch lines. Food Service Solutions Inc is a software development company based out of Altoona Pennsylvania that successfully designed and implemented Biometrics into a Since that date, hundreds of school districts, universities, and government agencies have incorporated fingerprint biometrics into their POS systems. Current research shows that biometrics are certain to have a major influence on the POS market for years to come.

Early POS software

The early electronic cash registers (ECR) were programmed in proprietary software and were very limited in function and communications capability. In August of 1973 IBM announced the IBM 3650 and 3660 Store Systems that were, in essence, a mainframe computer packaged as a store controller that could control 128 IBM 3653/3663 Point of Sale Registers. This system was the first commercial use of client-server technology, peer to peer communications, Local Area Network (LAN) simultaneous backup, and remote initialization. For other uses of the term see Peer-to-peer (disambiguation For peer-to-peer networks used for file sharing see File sharing By mid-1974, it was installed in Pathmark Stores in New Jersey and Dillards Department Stores. Pathmark is a Supermarket chain headquartered in Montvale New Jersey, founded in 1968 when its parent Supermarkets General (now known by the store name pulled

Programmability allowed retailers to be more creative. In 1979 Gene Mosher's Old Canal Cafe in Syracuse, New York was using POS software written by Mosher that ran on an Apple II to take customer orders at the restaurant's front entrance and print complete preparation details in the restaurant's kitchen. Gene Mosher (born January 13, 1949 in Watertown New York) is best known for inventing the graphic Touchscreen Point of sale In that novel context, customers would often proceed to their tables to find their food waiting for them already. This software included real time labor and food cost reports.

POS hardware interface standardization

Vendors and retailers are working to standardize development of computerized POS systems and simplify interconnecting POS devices. Two such initiatives are OPOS and JavaPOS, both of which conform to the UnifiedPOS standard led by The National Retail Foundation. OPOS or OLE for Retail POS consists of an architecture for Win32-based POS device access JavaPOS (short for "Java for Point of Sale Devices" is a standard for interfacing point of sale (POS software written in Java, with the specialized hardware UnifiedPOS or UPOS is a retailer-driven initiative to combine two existing device interface standards under one specification to allow retailers freedom of choice in the selection The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail Trade association, with membership that comprises all retail formats and channels of distribution including department

OPOS, short for OLE for POS, was the first commonly-adopted standard and was created by Microsoft, NCR Corporation, Epson and Fujitsu-ICL. Object Linking and Embedding ( OLE) is a technology that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects developed by Microsoft. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer NCR Corporation ( is a technology company specializing in products for the retail and financial sectors or Epson, is a Japanese company and one of the world's largest manufacturers of inkjet, dot matrix and Laser printers scanners is a Japanese company specializing in Semiconductors Computers ( Supercomputers Personal computers, servers, Telecommunications OPOS is a COM-based interface compatible with all COM-enabled programming languages for Microsoft Windows. Component Object Model ( COM) is an interface standard for Software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993 A programming language is an Artificial language that can be used to write programs which control the behavior of a machine particularly a Computer. Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. OPOS was first released in 1996. JavaPOS was developed by Sun Microsystems, IBM, and NCR Corporation in 1997 and first released in 1999. Sun Microsystems Inc ( is a multinational vendor of Computers computer components Computer software, and Information technology services International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology NCR Corporation ( is a technology company specializing in products for the retail and financial sectors JavaPOS is for Java what OPOS is for Windows, and thus largely platform independent.

POS communication command protocols

There are several communication protocols POS systems use to control peripherals. Among them are

• EPSON Esc/POS
• UTC Standard
• UTC Enhanced
• AEDEX
• ICD 2002
• Ultimate
• CD 5220
• DSP-800
• ADM 787/788.

There are also nearly as many proprietary protocols as there are companies making POS peripherals. EMAX, used by EMAX International, was a combination of AEDEX and IBM dumb terminal.

Most POS peripherals, such as displays and printers, support several of these command protocols in order to work with many different brands of POS terminals and computers.

Point of sales in the restaurant industry

Hospitality point of sale systems have revolutionized the restaurant industry. Hospitality point of sales systems are computerized systems incorporating registers computers and peripheral equipment usually on a computer network which exist in the food service This is particularly found in fast food service and sales. A number of restaurant chains employ systems which use computer networks. In the most recent technologies, registers are virtual computers, sometimes using touch screens. They will connect to a server, often referred to as a "store controller" or a "central control unit. " Printers and monitors are also found on the network. Additionally, remote servers will connect to store networks and monitor sales and other store data.

The efficiency of such systems have decreased service times and increased efficiency of orders.

Currently, POS systems are manufactured and serviced by several firms; see point of sale companies category.

Point of sales systems in restaurant environments operate on DOS, Windows or Unix environments. DOS, short for "Disk Operating System" is a shorthand term for several closely related Operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer They can use a variety of physical layer protocols, though Ethernet is currently the preferred system.

In the fast food industry, a number of configurations may be used in able to aid in the speed of operations. Registers themselves may be in front counter, drive through or walk through cashiering and ordertaking modes. Front counter registers will take and serve orders at the same terminal. Drive through registers will allow orders to be taken at one or more drive through windows and cashiered and served at another. In addition to registers, drive through and kitchen monitors may be used by store personnel to view orders. Once orders appear they may be deleted or recalled by "bump bars", small boxes which have different buttons for different uses. Drive through systems are often enhanced by the use of drive through wireless (or headset) systems which enable communications with drive through speakers.

Modern EPoS Systems

Epos systems have evolved in the last few years, modern EPoS systems are often highly sophisticated being integrated with back office merchandising, planning, procurement and business intelligence systems providing retailers with real-time information to manage their business. EPos (or electronic point of sale) software makes it possible for businesses to ensure that they are fully operational at all times and that all of your staff's repetitive POS tasks are as streamlined as possible.

The modern EPoS Systems are a retailers eyes and ears on their business.

See also

• Self-checkout
• EFTPOS
• Wireless POS
• UnifiedPOS
• JavaPOS
• ISO 8583
• Point of sale companies category
• Radiant Systems