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Education

compete had to use Datacap's NETe- want anything to do with the MLS model. If you don't believe me, look at
Pay, which was expensive and almost Square, or Clover.
impossible to purchase directly un-
less and MLS was a certified reseller For today's MLS, this means partner with a good cloud-based POS company.
of that software. Master their system and make sure that to lock down the processing so they
can't switch on you. If you're thinking of building your own POS or buying a
Then several processing companies startup POS company, don't. I will alter an old saying for the sake of this article:
got into the POS business in order to If you want to make a small fortune, start with a much bigger one and build or
compete with the VAR and Mercury. buy a POS company. If we want to be profitable with the rates we charge, we
And one of them offered a POS sys- must sell a POS system with processing included. The POS is the real meat. It
tem for free. It was not 100 percent is what merchants focus on.
free, but for all intents and purposes
it was marketed as free. The process- Years ago, when Mercury came on the scene, its VAR partner would sell the
ing industry does one thing better POS system, tell the merchant that processing was included at no additional
than any other. We are the best at tak- cost, and that someone would call to set up the processing. The VAR then re-
ing a product or service and taking ferred the merchant to Mercury, and the rates were hefty and extremely profit-
all the profit out of it. Not because we able. Why? Because merchants didn't have a clue about what the rates should
need to but because we think this is be. All they cared about was having a working POS.
the only way to sell it. As most MLSs
are known to do, they sell on price I believe this sale type can still be achieved, but only when selling value, and
not value. value is only achieved by us when a POS system is included. Find a POS sys-
tem, learn it, sell it and profit from it.
My team got into selling POS in the
mid 2000s, and I learned that once Steve Norell is director of sales at US Merchant Services Inc. Based in Port St. Lucie, Fla., he oversees
you sell merchants a POS, you are the USMS sales force and maintains the company's bank and processor relationships. You can
tied to them until they die or go out
of business. This does not address reach him by email at steven@usmsllc.com or by phone at 772-220-7515.
the manpower you need to provide
to perform customer service and
installation, training, cost of hard-
ware inventory, and sales minimums
you must meet with your software
provider. In short, it doesn't make
enough money to warrant doing it –
even when you get the processing.
The game changer – cloud-based
software
Someone somewhere figured out
how to provide app-driven POS soft-
ware with the operating system in
the cloud also known as software-as-
a-service. This means no hard drive,
no crashes, no upgrades to purchase.
For a small monthly fee, merchants
get the best of all worlds: customer
service, free upgrades, an operating
system, and a feature rich system
with very few moving parts. Now the
MLS can be in the POS business with
very little cash or manpower outlay –
or even knowledge.

Sounds great doesn't it? But a nagging
problem remains. Many cloud-based
products that are becoming the real
players are proprietary when it comes
to the processing, which cuts out the
MLS. They want it all and they don't
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