[callmeed]

In the POS 2.0 space (referring to new, tablet/cloud services), how many players will survive 5 years down the road?

Is this a "winner take all" or "winner + 2nd place take all" space?

I feel bad for the local cafe that hitches their wagon to an eventual loser–especially if their data is locked in.

[mrgreenfur]

I think most of the newfangled POS vendors will help migrate data across. Maybe not historical sales data, but certainly inventory. I also think it's not long before everyone can search local inventories nearby. Unless one of them dominates from the beginning, I can see many POS + web front ends competing for a long time.

[callmeed]

My counter to your first argument is this: if someone's proprietary digital wallet service takes off (like Square's) or someone with a huge base of users with payment data (read: Apple or Amazon) gets in the space, all other POS vendors will get hammered by churn.

[adrr]

Speaking of the space. Are there any card readers that lets you bring you own payment processing? Would love roll my own POS software but have yet to find a card reader that has an open API.

[callmeed]

CardFlight http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/08/cardflight-partners-with-st...

and others at

https://angel.co/search?q=card%20reader