Company: VeriFone, San Jose, CA
Company Description: Founded in 1981, VeriFone is the global leader in secure electronic payment solutions and is present in more than 80 percent of U.S. retailers. VeriFone provides expertise, solutions and services that add value to the point-of-sale with merchant-operated, consumer-facing and self-service payment systems for the financial, retail, hospitality, petroleum, government and healthcare vertical markets.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Categories - Software
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Software - Cloud Application/Service

Nomination Title: Verifone Cloud POS

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 650 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

Merchants across the globe are focused on driving store visits, flexibly managing their business and creating secure, high value experiences for their customers. In particular, smaller merchants are seeking more value from their in-store point of sale (POS) in order to accomplish these goals. They want a technology platform that not only securely accepts all forms of payment (such as EMV and NFC), but is also easily customizable, can grow with their business by better enabling digital offers, and identify, engage and reward their best customers through loyalty and coupon programs.

Additionally, merchants want flexible payment system management capabilities and better insight into their business performance. They want all of this from a cost effective solution to traditional cash registers.

In March 2015, Verifone, a global leader in payment technology innovation, launched Verifone Cloud POS—its Android-based cloud point of sale solution for small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs). For years, Verifone has partnered with ISOs, acquirers and other payment service providers to provide value and reduce payment complexity for SMBs. To enable them to better serve their SMB clientele, Verifone provides Verifone Cloud POS to merchants exclusively through its partners.

When bundled with Verifone’s industry-leading mobile terminals and software, Verifone Cloud POS enables ISOs and acquirers to meet the needs of smaller merchants with an Android-based cloud POS system for tablets and smart phones offering:

• Turnkey, fully integrated hardware and software solution
• Open architecture for developers to easily create customizable/scalable applications for merchants of all sizes
• Featured value added services, as well as integration with third-party value added service providers, so that merchants can more easily deploy digital offers, loyalty and coupons
• Powerful reporting capabilities that provide merchants with enhanced insight into their business
• Interoperability with any processor (processor agnostic)

Additionally, the Android-based system enables remote management not available in iOS platforms, as well as cloud-based storage for secure access to data anytime, anywhere.

These capabilities combined with Verifone’s industry leading secure payment expertise and support—including pre-sale demonstrations, training and merchant on-boarding—provide Verifone partners a foundational cloud POS platform they can use to grow small merchants’ businesses and ensure their success.

Verifone Cloud POS is ideal for SMBs in a number of verticals, including restaurants, cafeterias, food service and sports and entertainment venues, as well as retail. The complete cloud POS solution includes:

• Offline support to ensure merchants’ businesses are never disrupted
• Access to Verifone’s Commerce Enablement platform that allows merchants to reward loyal customers and add value to the POS
• 10.1” Android tablets with WiFi and optional 4G cellular connectivity for mobile and/or standalone application
• Optional peripherals such as cash drawers, receipt printers and scanners

The solution also includes a consumer mobile app developed by Verifone that restaurants and other food service businesses can use to allow consumers to order ahead from their smartphones.

This scalable cloud POS offering that integrates with Verifone’s new suite of mobile products it also announced earlier this year addresses merchants’ requests for mobile terminals that are more flexible, future-proof, and operate at a lower cost of ownership. This development is an initial step in a series of end-to-end mobile solutions Verifone sees on the horizon that will package hardware, software, gateways, and other assets to fully address the needs of its merchants and partners’ needs while enabling them to add more value for consumers at the point of sale.

Within one month of launching Verifone Cloud POS, dozens of ISOs and acquirers serving tens of thousands of smaller merchants added the cloud-based platform to their suite of offerings.

“SMBs need more than a payment solution, but until recently it was difficult to provide enterprise level capability to a small business. Solutions like Verifone Cloud POS solve that problem, and when connected to a tablet based terminal, it provides a combination of functionality and portability that will meet the needs of a variety of different SMB categories.”
--Thad Peterson, Senior Analyst, Aite Group

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) of the chief features and benefits of the nominated product or service.

Verifone Cloud POS provides the following key features and benefits:

• Consumer mobile app that restaurants and other food service businesses can use to allow consumers to order ahead from their smartphones.
• Android-based solution that enables remote payment system management not available in iOS platforms, as well as cloud-based storage for secure access to data anytime, anywhere.
• Open architecture for developers to easily create customizable/scalable applications for merchants of all sizes
• Featured value added services, as well as integration with third-party value added service providers, so that merchants can more easily deploy digital offers, loyalty and coupons
• Powerful reporting capabilities that provide merchants with enhanced insight into their business
• Interoperability with any payment processor (processor agnostic)
• Offline support to ensure merchants’ businesses are never disrupted
• Access to Verifone’s Commerce Enablement platform that allows merchants to reward loyal customers and add value to the POS
• 10.1” Android tablets with WiFi and optional