Explainer · Point of Sale

Point of Sale: terminals, software and integrations

"POS" used to mean the cash register by the door. Today it means anything from a standalone card terminal to a full cloud-based platform with inventory, CRM and e-commerce integration. This page maps the current landscape.

What "POS" means in 2026

Point of sale is the meeting point between the customer and the transaction — historically a cash register, today a combination of hardware (terminal, printer, cash drawer, card reader) and software (inventory, loyalty, analytics). The line between a "terminal" and a "POS system" has blurred considerably: a modern Clover or PAX device runs a full Android application layer and looks more like a tablet with a chip reader than a traditional terminal.

Three broad categories

Category	Examples	Typical merchant
Standalone terminal	Verifone V200, Ingenico Desk/3500, PAX A920, Dejavoo Z-Line	Service businesses, low-SKU retail, mobile trades
Tablet POS	Square Register, Clover Station, Toast Flex, SpotOn Restaurant	Restaurants, quick-service, small specialty retail
Integrated retail platform	Heartland Retail, Lightspeed, Shopify POS, NCR Counterpoint	Multi-location retail, omnichannel sellers

Standalone terminals

The cheapest entry point and often the fastest to deploy. A standalone terminal plugs into a phone line, ethernet or cellular, reads cards, prints receipts, and closes a batch at end-of-day. That's it. For a contractor, a small salon, or a boutique with a single checkout, this can be all you need.

The trade-off: no inventory integration, no sales analytics, no CRM. The terminal produces a daily batch total and that's the extent of its reporting. The processor's merchant portal fills in some of the gap, but a terminal-only merchant loses the per-item profitability view that a fuller POS provides.

Tablet POS

Tablet-based POS — Clover, Square, Toast, SpotOn — is the dominant category for small and mid-size merchants. The tablet runs a full operating system (iPad/iOS in some, Android in most), which means the POS software is a proper application with menus, item modifiers, employee time-tracking and customer management. The card reader is usually an accessory or an integrated module.

Tablet POS pairs with card processing in one of two ways. Some tablet POS systems (Square, Toast) lock the merchant into the vendor's own processing — a closed ecosystem. Others (Clover, SpotOn) are "open" in theory but in practice are usually deployed together with a specific processor or ISO. Reading the fine print on processor-lock before buying is worth the time.

A POS system is only as good as the payment processor behind it. Beautiful software on top of bad processing economics is still bad processing economics. — Editorial fieldnote

Integrated retail platforms

Integrated retail platforms are where point-of-sale meets full business management. Inventory across multiple locations, purchase orders, vendor management, loyalty, gift cards, e-commerce sync, and accounting integration — all tied back to the physical checkout. Heartland Retail, Lightspeed Retail, NCR Counterpoint and Shopify POS sit in this category.

These platforms cost more and require more setup time, but they scale. A merchant on a standalone terminal who opens a third location quickly hits the ceiling of what the terminal can do. A merchant on an integrated platform usually does not.

Choosing between them

Three decision points matter more than the others:

1. Volume of SKUs. A merchant with 20 SKUs is a different animal from a merchant with 5,000. Terminals work for the first; integrated platforms are required for the second.
2. Number of locations. Single-location merchants have more options. Multi-location merchants should skip standalone terminals entirely.
3. Processor flexibility. Some POS systems lock you to their processing; others let you choose. If you already have a favorable processing rate, check compatibility before committing to a POS.