Poynt Unveils Tech-Agnostic Smart Payment Terminal

California-based Poynt Co. has announced the world’s first “smart” payment terminal, bringing the unlimited versatility of a mobile device to a future-proof payment terminal.

The upcoming early 2015 launch of the Poynt Smart Terminal, which meets the highest PCI and EMV requirements, comes at a time when merchants are required to adopt the EMV standard by October 2015.

Designed to be able to connect to any merchant bank, the multipurpose device comes with a dual touchscreen design that combines a 7” merchant-facing screen and 4.3” customer-facing screen, wireless connectivity, barcode scanner and printer.

Unlike existing payment terminals that usually support one or two payment methods, the Smart Terminal incorporates traditional mag-stripe cards, EMV, NFC, Bluetooth and QR code support. With these payment technologies, merchants can accept all modes of payments without spending on additional hardware.

The terminal also promises advanced security with the use of the latest security technologies to protect sensitive payment data. With end-to-end encryption, merchants are never at risk of exposing customers’ information. It also alerts merchants of any possible risk with its 24/7 fraud and tamper detection.

The Poynt Smart Terminal also has the ability to self-update through the Internet, ensuring that the device always has the newest and safest technology.

“Consumers carry connected supercomputers in their pockets while in-store technology still centers around a glorified calculator,” said Poynt founder and CEO Osama Bedier.

Bedier previously worked on Google Wallet, and served as VP of Product Development at PayPal.

“Solving for that disparity, we borrowed from the best in mobile technology to make the payment terminal smart and help small businesses rise to meet growing consumer expectations. With Poynt, merchants can also say, ‘There’s an app for that!”

It may be intriguing to merchants, since at the end of the day, it makes the most sense to allow customers to pay the way they want, and the upcoming Poynt reader allows for just that.