Vend & iZettle Get Together in Perfect Match
Sometimes combinations just work out well together.
From chocolate and peanut butter to tuna and mayonnaise, combinations can get together and produce a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
One recent such combination brought together Vend and iZettle, companies whose product lines turned out to be nicely complementary, and offered up a whole new value for its market base.
Vend is a company that commonly deals in point of sale systems, particularly those with a cloud focus. Meanwhile, iZettle works with mobile payments, making the two an excellent match.
Under the terms of the new arrangement, Vend will be bringing its software in for use on iZettle’s card reader hardware, a development that should prove quite worthwhile.
Since Vend’s software is currently in use at over 15,000 stores worldwide, it’s already got a fairly substantial install base to its credit.
But beyond that, it’s likewise available to any computer or tablet that can field a Web browser, making it sufficiently flexible to be put into use under just about any condition.
Conditions that make it ripe for iZettle to come in and offer up its card reader hardware for use with Vend’s software, making it a more complete point-of-sale system that can handle cards immediately.
This is especially useful for shoppers who’d sooner not wait in line at a register, and can instead make purchases from sales assistants moving about a store. That makes the whole process smoother and faster, and provides further encouragement to return to a brick-and-mortar store over shopping online instead.
While the new Vend / iZettle combination won’t be available just anywhere—it’s so far available in a handful of Western European nations, like Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK as well as Mexico and Brazil—the fact that it’s available in so many locations within that comparatively narrow band of nations speaks well toward its overall usefulness.
But what Vend and iZettle may do together is one thing that some may have thought was almost an impossible: give brick-and-mortar a fresh lease on life.
The practice of webrooming is going a long way toward making the regular store a vital part of our lives again—combining the ease and convenience of shopping online with the immediacy of going to a store to pick up our items—but even webrooming was going to go only so far.
After all, there would still be those willing to wait that week or so for a shipment to go out if it meant more convenience. But with a system like Vend and iZettle, customers get, potentially, access to a system that’s even more convenient than shopping online.
Users go to the store—which is perhaps the most inconvenient part of the whole thing—find the desired item, pay for it at the point of acquisition, and walk out. No waiting in line for a cashier to finally take an order, just walk in, pay, and go.
The wait times are significantly reduced if not gone outright, and that’s enough to likely make some wonder if the Vend / iZettle combination might not make a jump to North American or Asian markets in the near future.
Vend and iZettle have what looks like a winning proposition together, but can they make the jump to a worldwide launch? That’s something only time will tell, but it’s certainly not out of line to suggest the possibility exists.