July 19, 2012, 2:22 PM — NCR Corp., which has been making cash registers for nearly 130 years, this week announced the launch of NCR Silver, a new service that lets merchants ring up sales on iPads and iPhones, then track and analyze their sales data at the end of the day.
The company joins a growing field of iOS-based "point-of-sale" products in a field pioneered largely by Square, but which also includes competitors like PayPal, Sail Payments and Intuit's GoPayment.
Like those services, NCR is providing merchants with a free app to use in processing and tracking payments from customers. NCR, however, appears to be leaning heavily on hardware in its business model: The company doesn't provide a free card reader to its customers--instead it charges merchants $79 for a basic credit-card reader, or $549 for a device that scans barcodes and reads credit cards. It also sells an "iPad register bundle"--including a card reader, cash drawer, and receipt printer--for $619.
Merchants will also pay a $79-a-month fee for every iPhone and iPad they use as a register. (As part of NCR Silver's launch, though, the first 1,000 merchants to sign up will pay a $39 monthly fee for the life of their business.) Additional iOS devices can be added for a 10-cent-fee for every transaction they process, with that fee maxing out at $29 per device.
How do merchants choose between NCR Silver and other iOS-based services? Macworld last compared the services in March, when Square Register launched. The details remain mostly unchanged since then. There are many similarities, but some differences.
