Discover the future of finance in Latin America and the CaribbeanIn a highly competitive market, payment fintechs look to multifunctional point-of-sale terminals as allies to differentiate themselvesThe paytechs are embarking on the game of differentiation.And they have found an ally in the POS.In a market like Latin America, characterized by growing competition, companies dedicated to digital payments are increasingly focused on developing new services.Point of sale terminals, beyond processing transactions, have the potential to store valuable data for businesses, such as a warehouse or a restaurant, which with this tool can automate tedious but crucial processes.In this way, the merchant wins, acquiring tools to facilitate their account balances, inventory control or creation of catalogs for e-commerce, while paytech secures new users, attracted by a comprehensive service offer.It makes no sense that the POS - which is practically a computer - only serves to accept a card and pass a transaction, says Christian Alvarado, strategy, marketing and commercial manager of Izipay, a Peruvian payment processor.Izipay, which was bought by the Peruvian group Intercorp in April, is the leader in physical collections in the country, says Alvarado, thanks to its mobile terminal solution.In alliance with Arisale, a sales technology company, they are putting up smart POS with the name “Manage your business”.“They provide solutions at the level of productivity, computational power, information, which is used to make decisions for clients and, obviously, at the level of compliance with tax authorities, taxes.Everything is online, so there are a lot of collateral savings,” says Alvarado.Point of sale (POS) terminals have registered more than US$52 billion in sales during 2021 in Latin America, a figure that is expected to double to US$111 billion by 2025, according to data collected by Statista.In fact, electronic payment solutions are the fastest growing in the region.It is estimated that as a consequence of the e-commerce boom triggered by the pandemic, some 10.8 million users made their first purchase online, according to a 2021 Finnovista survey. The same survey showed that there are some 1,524 fintechs in Latin America , and that the bulk of them (about 601) are paytechs.This atomization in the market is leading payment fintechs to generate digital solutions to the daily problems of their customers, in order to enhance their delivered value and secure future customers.Through the placement of intelligent POS, a hardware that can load the product catalog of a business, keep daily cash control and even take orders in a restaurant, key processes for SMEs are automated, unlocking their potential to launch virtual business.“If you have already filled your product catalog to have it in your POS, for your physical world […] you press a button and if you want to sell e-commerce, everything you have in the physical is published in the virtual one,” says Alvarado.In order to complete its ecosystem of solutions for SMEs and integrate them into its POS, Izipay will provide industrial tablets in the coming months, to be installed in restaurant kitchens and take orders in real time.In addition, it will enable scales for warehouses and markets, in order to accurately control the supplies sold or used.The business model used by the company is based on licenses, which range from US$12 to US$37 per month, depending on the volume of data stored by the merchant in the company's cloud.Currently, they have 600,000 clients in Peru.They represent a trend that will continue to grow and is already latent in payment fintechs that have ventured into credit, to attract the attention of a green market, such as small businesses and merchants.“It is important to support small entrepreneurs with their operational, financial and daily review of their businesses.That is why added value for businesses becomes essential to complete comprehensive and differential solutions that add value to businesses from the impact of their income”, says Juliana Peña, head of sales at BPC, a global technology company of payments.In Chile, the fintech Klap is also placing smart Android POS in stores and leaving the door open for other business partners to add solutions to their terminal."What we do is that we make our hardware and technology available so that partners, which are the software, can install their applications or the businesses themselves can install their applications on our device," says Javier Gómez, Klap's payment manager.Adding third-party applications to the POS offer that help in business management seems to be the way forward for fintech payments.Above all, if they want to compete against bigtechs like Apple, which has also ventured into acquisitions with products like Tap to iPhone.Gómez comments that, with a sales management application, any business could take its collection box anywhere and process collections with its POS.According to company data, Klap has more than 70,000 affiliated businesses and a market share of 15% in the food purchase category in Chile.In addition, it performs more than 202 million annual transactions.This volume of data allows acquirers to capture valuable information from merchants, something that players like Clip and Tribal are using to adjust their loan offers to SMEs.Izipay has not yet placed credits, but does not want to be left behind.“We are convinced that it is a regional and global trend that will also happen in Peru.And we definitely have to deliver that functionality at some point,” Alvarado concludes.iupana is the leading information service for banking, fintech and payment leaders in Latin America and the CaribbeanCopyright 2018-2021 ® iupana.All rights reserved.|SDW Design