Emerging Trend: Will Retailers Soon Choose iPads Over Registers?

By David Tobia
September 19, 2012

Square COO Keith Rabois claims “nearly all retailers” will soon ditch registers in favor of tablets. Rabois suggests the shift could happen within the next eighteen months.
“Everyone will be migrating to iPads and comparable devices, which will be powered by an app — that is, hopefully, Square,” says Rabois.
Of course, he could just be overly optimistic because of his ties to mobile payment company Square, but a “survey by the National Retail Federation last fall found that while only 6 percent of retailers said they used mobile point-of-sale devices, half of the respondents said at the time that they planned to adopt such devices over the next 18 months,” writes AllThingsD.
Market researcher NPD also reports that 75 percent of merchants plan to buy a tablet within the year.
“Essentially, Square’s biggest goal is to enable any merchant, regardless of their resources, to offer a mobile experience similar to the one Starbucks offers today through its application,” explains the article. “In August, Starbucks announced that it was investing in Square, and was going to start using it to process all of its credit and debit transactions.”
“Any merchant that is focused on customer service and the ambiance of their experience will be intrigued by what we offer,” claims Rabois.

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