Cash is queen - green, but not quite king

The road from cash and cash registers to #NextGenPOS with integrated payments

Payments providers and NextGenPOS software providers together offer merchants a great way to control their income and manage their business. Yet their biggest competition, the status quo of cash and cash registers, still has the upper hand in the small merchant market segment. Why is that and at what time point will a small merchant prefer card payments over cash as well as NextGenPOS over a cash register?

The answer is: growth - i.e. when merchants open up a second location.

Most merchants understand that managing cash isn’t entirely free (as opposed to cards) and cash registers aren’t exactly cheap either - so why do they cling onto cumbersome cash management and 1970s-technology cash registers?

The answer is: taxes, or tax avoidance to be specific.

The industry’s worst kept secret is that small merchants prefer cash over card payments simply because they don’t have to declare all of it to the authorities. Small merchants believe that having a NextGenPOS system that tracks all their income and/or card payments that are debited to their bank account, leaves an audit trail for the taxman and will raise their taxes. Although not entirely true, cash is the king of tax avoidance and offers a simple and handy income management as greens are at hand in the drawer (hopefully).

Opening up a business and managing that business is hard, whereby merchants usually work tirelessly behind the counter 24/7 to manage and grow their business. Due to such long hours, they typically believe they obtain a good overview of their business, their inventory, customer profile and income. Yet, it is when their business becomes so successful that they expand and open additional locations, that things start to fall apart. When that time comes, they will then have to trust someone else with money in the cash drawer (or hire someone in the family that they can trust - sound familiar?). Managing two or more locations is hard and the small merchants quickly loose oversight of inventory and business performance. That’s exactly the time when small merchants start looking for a POS system and prefer card payments over cash.

The irony is…

in order to become so successful that an expansion is possible, a strong oversight over their business is required: managing inventory efficiently (cash flow), understanding customer base and get repeat business (loyalty), managing employees as well as having time to work ON their business instead of IN their business so they can grow it

…merchants need NextGenPOS with integrated payments!