Disruption continues: Good-bye to the cash register

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 05/23/2011 - 14:44

That sound you hear is of the cash register business drying up. Square, a company that has developed a "soft" cash register for the iPad, is very likely to capture a big chunk of the traditional cash register market, which has been dominated by mostly small and medium-sized firms that customize mostly Windows-based computers. Part of Square's innovation is a small dongle that attaches to the iPad and reads credit cards. The market that is most likely to embrace this approach is the food industry; waitstaff can carry and iPad directly to the table and enter orders on the fly, reducing wait time and errors. This won't work for all stores, as you can see from the comments (grocery stores are not likely to find this useful, among others).