Trends

ISIS

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Vivian Wagner

It’s become all the buzz in the mobile payments world: ISIS. But what is it? And how did it get where it is today?

Rumors first started flying about a joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless to create a nationwide mobile payment infrastructure back in August, 2010.

No specifics were yet available, and no one knew what this venture would be called or how it would work, but that didn’t stop bloggers and reporters from speculating about what it would mean for the industry. And universally, they thought it would shake everything up.

The official announcement of the venture – and its name, Isis – came on Nov. 16, 2010. At that time, the company also revealed that Michael Abbott, who had previously worked for GE Capital, would be named CEO.

Over the next few months, Isis executives traveled the country to speak at conferences, conventions, and summits about the company’s mobile payment system plans.

On April 6, 2011, Isis announced that Salt Lake City would be one of its first trial markets, and that it would be working with the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) to allow payments for public transportation using mobile devices. By June, Austin, Texas had been added to the list of early launch markets.

On July 19, 2011, a partnership was announced between Isis, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. “Since the formation of Isis in November, we have been committed to building a mobile commerce platform that aligns and advances the interests of consumers, merchants and banks,” Abbott was quoted as saying in the press release. “By working with the nation’s payment networks – Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express – we significantly advance the vision of an open and secure platform that provides banks and merchants with a new and highly relevant way to connect with consumers.”

Selling the Public

In August, 2011, Isis ramped up its public relations, releasing a brochure explaining how the Isis Mobile Wallet would allow consumers to make payments, use loyalty cards, and redeem coupons.

In late September, 2011, Isis made another big announcement: HTC, LG, Motorola Mobility, RIM, Samsung Mobile and Sony Ericsson would introduce NFC-enabled mobile devices implementing Isis’ NFC and technology standards.

“Isis’ technology standards provide the direction and certainty needed for the development and deployment of NFC devices and the mobile commerce ecosystem,” the company’s chief technology officer, Scott Mulloy, said in a press release. “Working together with the device makers and our founding mobile carriers, Isis can provide the consumer choice and scale necessary for widespread adoption of mobile commerce.”

There you have it: a brief history of the company that promises to change the payments world forever. Thanks to Isis, 2012 promises to be the year when a wallet filled with credit cards will become, finally, a thing of the past.

Vivian Wagner is a freelance writer in New Concord, Ohio. Vivian blogs via Contently.com.

Gift Shop POS

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Do you own a retail gift shop and would like to see an increase in sales and valuable time? You should consider using point of sale gift shop software. The right POS software can increase your sales on average of 15% while saving you up to five hours a day.

Advantages of a point of sale system for your gift shop.

  • You will be able to control all inventory in real-time and keep hot selling items readily available.
  • Track customers – helps you send out promotional coupons or discounts to bring customers back.
  • Save time and reduce errors by entering the price of the item directly into the POS.
  • Never have a pricing discrepancy
  • Fast checkout lines
  • See if you have an item in stock or do a special order right at the register.

Take time to consider the right Gift Shop Point of Sale Software. Find one that is affordable, easy to use and has readily available technical support. There are many options when choosing a POS. You could host your own software and database or find a web based company that handles all that for you.

Read the article below for more information on Gift Shop Point of Sale.

Show Me the Money! Saying Yes to POS

Retail Software Advice

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Retail Software Advice

The Retail Software Advice site is a new service helping retailers selecting the right retail point-of-sale software. According to the owners of the site, they have developed a very smart matching algorithm that matches buyers with the right software, much like Google matches you with web pages relevant to your keyword searches.

To search for software, you select one of the 22 retail verticals, the size of your business —strangely enough expressed in annual revenue, which is rather insignificant for POS selection, and check some of the optional features such as Inventory Management, CRM, accounting or e-commerce.

The search results are presented in a clear table with the main characteristics for each product found. There are also two handy buttons for requesting a free demo or pricing information.

Dell installs SAP on Point-of-Sale

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Dell SAP

Dell will team with SAP to offer an integrated point-of-sale (POS) store solution, enabling retailers to utilize SAP for Retail software solutions on Dell’s Retail OptiPlex 745 POS systems and Dell PowerEdge servers. The alliance, which brings together the world’s biggest business software maker and the No. 2 PC maker, promises to deliver systems that help retailers run their business more cheaply and efficiently.

Enhanced POS features — including accurate and timely customer demand data, real-time inventory visibility and integrated returns processing — combined with seamless connections into core merchandising and supply chain processes, will help enable retailers to better track purchase behaviors, identify buying trends and process customer transactions more rapidly.

NY Times on the rise of OpenTable

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OpenTableIt has been a while ago since I last touched the theme of Restaurant reservation systems.

New York Times runs a story about the success of OpenTable, which wasn’t exactly an overnight success. The thing that pushed OpenTable over the edge toward acceptance wasn’t so much the public-facing business —let your customers make reservations online— but the software that the restaurants were provided to keep better track of their customers and their habits. It used to be a big deal that Four Seasons Hotels tracked the preferences of all their customers but now any restaurant with the OT system can easily do the same.

Doug Washington, a co-owner of Town Hall, said the notes were not just helpful, they are occasionally indispensable. Next to the name of one regular, who has a habit of bringing in women he is not married to, is an instruction to make sure the man’s wife has not booked a separate table for the same day.

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