The Green Sheet Online Edition
July 13, 2026 • 26:07:01
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Is that a product or capability? Part 1
When my op-ed, "Is that a terminal or a PIN pad?" appeared in June 2014, in Issue 14:06:02 of The Green Sheet, hardware was in a state of flux. PIN pads were getting bigger, terminals were getting smaller and the U.S. market was preparing to migrate to EMV technology. This was a defining moment in payments, an opportunity for ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) to help business owners navigate a changing landscape that challenged everything they knew about card-present transactions. Merchants and consumers had to adjust to new hardware configurations and replace habitual card-swiping habits with inserting and tapping credit cards at the point of sale.
There was also more fluidity in hardware design. A countertop terminal, for example, could become a peripheral when attached to a cash register that used its display screen, card reader and modem. A tablet with a customer-facing display connected to a clerk-facing terminal or a mobile device communicating to a central POS hub could also function as a peripheral to adjacent devices and POS systems.
"As PIN pads get larger and terminals get smaller, it's becoming difficult to tell them apart," I wrote. "Next generation hybrid devices can be used as PIN pads or terminals according to a merchant's needs."
From dumb to smart
Understandably, these changes made merchants uneasy about investing in POS systems. In addition to having a general mistrust of first-generation machines, business owners were concerned about hardware obsolescence, non-compliance penalties and the high cost of routine maintenance, all of which made equipment ROI an open question. Some shameful shenanigans were also going on at the time, such as deploying terminals with built-in smart card readers that were nothing more than empty slots and similarly designed PIN pads positioned as "EMV-ready" out of the box.
Paytech executive Andrey Tikhonov, who was chief technology officer at Dejavoo in 2014 and currently serves CEO at VeryPay, agreed some service providers were oversimplifying the extensive device and infrastructure upgrades needed for a successful EMV migration.
"In many cases, these legacy systems have insufficient memory to manage the additional code to integrate an EMV PIN pad and EMV-specific logic necessary to communicate with a payment processing host according to EMV requirements," he said.
From special-purpose to future-ready
Months ahead of the Oct. 15, 2015, EMV liability shift deadline, legacy manufacturers used the word "purpose-built" to instill confidence in a new generation of equipment. The term, which originated in the manufacturing sector, refers to specialized devices designed to perform specific tasks.
"Purpose-built machines (often called special purpose machinery) are custom-engineered equipment designed to perform a highly specific manufacturing, assembly, or operational task that off-the-shelf equipment cannot handle," stated Peko Precision Products' website.
Leading manufacturers promoted purpose-built, PCI-DSS and EMVCo-certified payment card terminals and PIN pads, intentionally designed to meet global security standards and deliver secure, compliant and intelligent payment card processing.
From off-the-shelf to hyper-personalized
Terms like "purpose-built," "out-of-the-box" and "off-the-shelf" evoke a hardware-centric era, when consistently viable products rolled off assembly lines. The original concept of smart POS involved a physical handshake between a chip card and chip reader, which was more personalized than a magstripe card with easily duplicatable track 1 and track 2 data. Today, smart products do more than follow scripts; they ask customers what they need.
In June 2026, TAZI AI Systems added the TAZI Enterprise Agent to its line of ready-made AI agents. The conversational AI can be embedded in workplace environments to help companies protect data, optimize revenue and mitigate risk, according to Zehra Cataltepe, co-founder and CEO of TAZI AI.
"TAZI Enterprise Agent runs inside your own walls, follows your own rules, on an AI engine you control," she said, adding that the company offers other AIs focused on specific tasks, like preventing fraud or retaining and attracting customers. Cataltepe further noted that because each agent works with proprietary data, out-of-the-box and hyper-personalization aren't necessarily opposites, but complementary parts of systems that learn and adapt over time. In this new paradigm, is the product an application or capability? Part 2 will explore this question.
Dale S. Laszig, content strategy director at The Green Sheet and founder and CEO at DSL Direct, is a payments industry journalist, creator and consultant. Connect via email at dale@dsldirectllc.com and LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/dalelaszig.
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