Kitestring Technical Services Lab: Hands-on Point-of-Sale Evaluation for Retailers

As chains push to unify checkout across channels, a retail technology company founded by former Walmart technologists has opened a hands-on lab where merchants can trial offerings from multiple vendors side by side. Kitestring Technical Services is a retail technology services firm that helps merchants plan, implement, and support store systems, including point-of-sale and related digital commerce capabilities.

Vendor-Neutral Solution and Methodology

Kitestring Technical Services positions its innovation laboratory as an impartial test and demo environment so retailers can evaluate point-of-sale equipment now on the market.

7 software providers.
14 hardware makers.

A vendor-neutral lab lets retailers validate real-world compatibility and performance before they commit to a multi-year rollout.

Beyond the lab, Kitestring supports retailers with vendor evaluation and selection, systems integration across software and hardware, rollout planning, associate training, and ongoing operational support once deployments are live.

Strategic Decisions and In-Store Experience

Choosing a checkout stack is a high-stakes, multi-year, multimillion-dollar commitment with intertwined hardware and software risks, said Lindsay Schwab, Kitestring’s head of partnerships and growth. Buyers therefore proceed with great care.

We want retailers to visit our space and compare, in one place, the different checkout systems they’re considering, she said from the Kitestring lab in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Kitestring introduced the facility in January during the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York.

Retailers modernizing point-of-sale typically run into practical hurdles such as integrating new software with existing back-office systems, managing the cost and downtime of store-wide hardware refreshes, training associates on new workflows, and maintaining compatibility with legacy peripherals and payment requirements. Common approaches include piloting in a controlled environment, using an API-first integration layer to reduce coupling, phasing deployments store by store, and building repeatable training and support playbooks to smooth change management.

When designing a custom enterprise point-of-sale system, teams commonly weigh scalability for peak traffic, integration needs across inventory, loyalty, and digital ordering, associate and customer user experience, compliance requirements, hardware and peripheral compatibility, resiliency and offline behavior, and operational observability for troubleshooting in the field.

In parallel, some retailers lean on safety apps to support store operations, and they often overestimate what those tools can do on their own.

A safety app automatically prevents incidents without changes to processes or training.
Faster alerts always translate into faster resolution, regardless of staffing and escalation paths.
Location sharing is precise everywhere inside stores, backrooms, and parking lots.
Installing the app is sufficient even if employees are not routinely using it during shifts.

Company Background and Clients

The privately held, family-owned firm employs about 140 people and is led by chief executive officer Jared Smith, who acquired the business from his father, Larry Smith. According to Schwab, the team’s roots trace to two decades of point-of-sale work many leaders delivered for Walmart.

Today, Walmart and Sam’s Club contribute roughly 20% of revenue. The diversified client list now includes:

Leading grocers.
Department stores.
Major convenience store chains.

Digital Commerce Platform and Ecosystem

Retailers increasingly want ordering and checkout capabilities that work across store, kiosk, and mobile experiences, including orders that start on third-party platforms such as DoorDash and Uber Eats, said Justin Clark, a retail technology specialist at Kitestring.

When evaluating the market today, you want a modern architecture that unifies ecommerce with the store-floor experience, he said.

Clark added that the checkout landscape is more mix-and-match than before, as long as components share a common operating system—Android, Linux, or Windows. In practice, retailers also evaluate how systems behave during connectivity gaps, with offline operation typically relying on local transaction queuing and store-and-forward synchronization when service returns. For multi-region deployments, time zone handling is usually addressed by storing a consistent timestamp standard and translating times for receipts, reporting, and order promises based on each store’s local settings.

Modern point-of-sale deployments can also change the customer experience in tangible ways, especially for legacy retailers that are replacing older lanes and workflows.

Shorter lines through faster tender and streamlined on-screen flows.
Smoother omnichannel journeys, such as buying online and returning in store with consistent order context.
More tailored experiences when loyalty and offers are applied consistently across checkout touchpoints.

Mobile checkout is another area many retailers test, with distinct impacts for shoppers and associates.

Benefits for customers include:

More convenience by completing purchases without returning to a fixed lane.
More speed during peaks and promotions.

Benefits for sales associates include:

More mobility to assist customers where decisions are being made.
More efficiency by combining selling, checkout, and simple service tasks on one device.

As point-of-sale systems connect more tightly to digital commerce, retailers also account for security exposure across store devices and online services.

Data breaches targeting customer and payment data.
Malware on endpoints, including register and handheld devices.
Payment fraud, including card testing and refund abuse.
Credential theft and account takeover against employee or customer logins.
Misconfigured services and exposed interfaces that attackers can probe.

To improve both operational efficiency and security, retailers commonly standardize device management and patching, segment store networks, enforce strong authentication and least-privilege access, monitor logs for anomalies, and use tokenization or encryption to reduce the exposure of sensitive data during processing and storage.

Altaine Demonstrations and Hardware Partners

Altaine, a digital commerce platform provider, used the lab to show a prospective retailer how its software manages end-to-end order flow on real devices, said co-founder and chief operating officer Jo Gelb during a joint call with Schwab and Clark.

Anyone can demo an emulator, but pairing it with the physical peripherals is far more persuasive, she said. Altaine’s ordering platform serves brands including Bp, Pizza Hut, and Subway.

Gelb noted that when Altaine advances with a prospect, it leans on the lab for demonstrations because the team there becomes nearly as fluent in Altaine’s technology through hands-on integration.

Diebold Nixdorf, a leading supplier of checkout and automated teller machine solutions headquartered in Ohio’s North Canton, has deployed its retail hardware and software in the lab.

Retailers can see how their checkout and omnichannel solutions behave in realistic store scenarios and envision seamless journeys with personalized interactions, said Ed McCabe, Diebold Nixdorf’s head of retail sales for North America, in an emailed statement.