Mobile POS and Payments
A Problem for Retailers

By Gator Hudson

There are two fast emerging technologies that will affect retail sales and surveillance:
1) Card reading devices that work inside a retail establishment that are essentially replacing “cash registers."
2) Mobile payment acceptance using devices attached to smart phones.

Mobile Point-of-Sale
The NRF says that in a few years the way you buy items in store will change dramatically. Instead of going to a cash register a clerk will walk up to you and ask if you want buy the item you are looking at, then “swipe” either your cell phone (using near field technology), or your credit card, over a mobile payment device they have in their hand. Several retailers are already using this technology. The challenge is that there is no dedicated camera over the cash register anymore to capture the images of the transaction. What to do?

The answer it seems to me is to build a top facing camera into the payment device the sales clerk has in his hand. When the transaction starts the camera comes on and captures images during the transaction. Or possibly it’s always recording but we use analytics to store the images for x seconds before and after the transaction.

The wireless network infrastructure in the store will be major upgraded to support the mobile POS devices so there should be enough bandwidth to support the images being sent from the built in camera, especially if the device has onboard intelligence about what to send/save.

Mobile Payment By Smartphone
Payment devices like Square are attached to a smartphone. The idea is the contractor that comes to your house to repair your roof can accept your credit card payment right there with his smartphone. The similar idea of using the smartphone’s camera to record and transmit the image applies. This would work well for the new smartphones that have a camera facing the front of the phone as well as the back.

Learn how you can use video to combat mobile payment fraud here.