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volume 9 • spring 2016
SEcrEt SaucE
Poynt is a technology company dedicated to modernizing tools for merchants. We work to create powerful and elegant products and services for merchants, which will enable them to run their businesses, use their sales data and serve their customers like never before.
GEttiNG tO KNOw
Poynt
Location
Palo Alto, Calif.
Open for Business
September 2013
Founder
Osama Bedier
Funding
Series B led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Stanford-StartX Fund as well as previous investors Matrix Partners, Webb Investment Network and Nyca Ventures.
Business Philosophy
At Poynt, merchants are the North Star for everything we do. We want to serve them with the same passion that they serve their customers. And we think technology has left merchants behind. Consumer tech has evolved rapidly in the last 30 years, but most mer- chants are still limited to things like single-utility, dumb termi- nals. Though reliable, these legacy tools are basically decades-old technology.
Something You Might
Not Expect
At 5 p.m. on Fridays, every single Poynt employee gets up, walks around and gives a high- ve to every co-worker. It started when we were just a few employees, but it stuck even as we grew.
Electronic payment options for consumers are proliferating, and shoppers expect merchants to
accept the full gamut. But for retailers—especially small and midsize enterprises (SMEs)—it can be tough to keep up. That’s where Poynt comes in. The brainchild of payments veteran and Google Wallet creator Osama Bedier, Poynt o ers a fully integrated solution that enables SMEs to accept virtually any electronic payment type: magstripe, EMV, NFC, QR code and Bluetooth beacon.
The Poynt terminal is a small countertop device that features two video touchscreens, modem, micro USB connection and an eight-hour battery for in-store portability. The system is an open platform and features an app store where merchants can obtain add-on services from third-party developers such as Intuit, Kounta and Vend. Poynt doesn’t charge merchants any transaction fees. Instead, the company takes a percentage of fees third-party developers charge merchants
for apps. The company distributes its products to retailers through acquiring banks and ISOs, institu- tions that have established rela- tionships with merchants.
Poynt-ing toward the Future
After debuting the Poynt prototype in late 2014, Bedier and his team spent the next several months testing the product and receiving multiple certi cations from the
PCI Security Standards Council and EMVCo. They also raised
$28 million in funding to support rollout. Poynt began shipping in the fourth quarter of 2015 to coincide with the U.S. EMV migra- tion kicking into high gear—a period Bedier calls “the biggest payments infrastructure change in U.S. history”—with many mer- chants looking to upgrade their POS systems to accept EMV- equipped payment cards.
But, as Bedier notes, “There’s no such thing as an abrupt change
in payments.” That stickiness, combined with the rise of con- sumer demand for an omnichannel shopping experience, highlights the need for a solution that supports the payment methods of yesterday, today—and tomorrow. “We’ve made our solution future-proof,”
he says. “So when a merchant starts using Poynt, they’re not just catching up with the past; they’re ready for the future.”
Building a hardware and software solution for the payment formats
of today—and tomorrow.
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