Just nine percent of today's Americans prefer to use cash for purchases. The other 91 percent? Credit and debit cards and other modern payment methods.
It’s virtually impossible for businesses to succeed without offering credit card payments. To best serve your customers (and make it easier for them to come back and buy more), you need to create a smooth credit card purchasing experience with the right payment partner.
This article will cover the advantages of credit card processing for small businesses. Then, we’ll dive into our list of five point of sale (POS) providers with strong retail credit card processing partnerships.
Retail Credit Card Processing: Know Your Options
Before we dig into the options for credit card processing and transaction systems, let’s take a closer look at credit card processing. What do credit card processors do?
Credit card processors allow retailers to accept plastic payments by securely connecting credit card networks, issuing banks, and more to your store’s merchant accounts. These connections enable the approval of transactions and the transfer of funds from customers' accounts into the retailers' accounts. For most retail businesses today, especially smaller shops, the ability to accept credit and debit cards is non-negotiable.
Beyond accommodating customer preferences for card payments, retailers also benefit from typically higher spending levels on credit compared to cash, with studies showing averages of 12 to 18 percent higher ticket sizes. Credit card processing also provides helpful back end data and reporting on transaction activity, which is useful for sales trend analysis and informing business decisions.
The right point of sale software and hardware will help improve checkout speed, transaction accuracy, and data security, and make accepting credit and debit payments at the register easier. Clunky, disjointed processing technology and POS systems lead to friction and frustration, so the best course of action is to implement a point of sale solution with a strong retail credit card processing partner, then use both solutions together.
With this in mind, let’s examine five options for point of sale solutions with integrated credit card processing features, giving you the information you need to make the best choice for your store.
Related Read: Processing Credit Cards With a POS System
5 POS Providers With Retail Credit Card Processing To Consider
1. Square
Best For: Health and Fitness Businesses
Square offers a range of payment processing solutions to help businesses accept transactions quickly and efficiently, whether in person, online, or remotely. Their tools and integrations aim to streamline operations so sellers never miss a sale. Businesses can choose hardware like card readers, stands, and terminals or use the Square POS app to take payments from anywhere.
Key features include instant bank transfers, detailed reporting and analytics, robust security protections, banking services, payroll management, customer engagement tools, and integrations with standard business software platforms. Ultimately, Square strives to provide reliable payments and operational support so enterprises can focus on serving their customers.
“It was super easy to get started, and it works perfectly for my inconsistent schedule of in-person markets. I'm new to my small business, and this was just such an easy tool to offer customers more buying options.” - Reviewer
2. Lightspeed
Best For: Restaurants and Golf Courses
Lightspeed Payments is a payment processing solution embedded within the Lightspeed POS system to help retailers and other businesses accept transactions seamlessly while unifying operations. Businesses can accept all major payment types in-store or online using Lightspeed's terminals and equipment.
Key benefits include fast checkout, omnichannel sales visibility, valuable customer insights from payment data, and streamlined support for hardware, software, and payments all in one place. The solution prioritizes security with PCI DSS compliance, end-to-end encryption, and 24/7 monitoring. Ultimately, Lightspeed Payments aims to drive efficiency, innovation, and growth for ambitious retailers and restaurateurs.
“It's a fast-loading back-end, reliable and flexible POS system for the most part that is good for small to medium-sized retail stores with multiple locations like ours. It has all the features you might need.” - Reviewer
3. KORONA POS
Best For: Ticketing (e.g. Museums and Amusement Parks)
KORONA POS offers payment processing and other capabilities to help businesses manage transactions, gain insights, and prevent fraud. It allows contactless and EMV chip payments using secure credit card machines. The system provides real-time sales reports and metrics to spot issues quickly, track cash controls, and identify slow-selling items.
Key features include employee time tracking, access controls, and detailed margin and profit reporting. KORONA goes beyond basic reporting to provide actionable suggestions to help optimize assortment planning, reorders, and more based on intelligent analytics. Ultimately, it aims to provide an integrated POS solution with payments, security, analytics, and automation to help businesses operate efficiently.
“Very user-friendly. You can customize the interface to conform to your business needs. Customer Service is in the United States, always accessible, and always awesome. We love that we can fit it to our scale of business and grow with it.” - Reviewer
4. Shopify
Best For: Online Stores
Shopify Payments is an integrated payment solution for Shopify merchants to accept transactions in-store and online securely. All payments across channels sync automatically into a unified back office to monitor real-time sales data, upcoming payouts, and detailed financial reporting.
Key features include tap, chip, and swipe payments, streamlined returns/exchanges, integrated gift cards, and offering buy now, pay later installment plans. By consolidating payments, payouts, and reporting into a single POS system, Shopify Payments aims to help retailers manage their money better and make data-driven business decisions.
“I love that it is so easy to find and update clients and process an order. I enjoy the multiple ways we can apply promo, sales and particular saving for our clients. And how fast it works with our CRM of Infusionsoft/KEAP to support purchases made by our clients.” - Reviewer
5. POS Nation
Best For: Small Retailers
POS Nation offers a feature-rich cloud-based retail POS system to streamline operations, gain business insights, and boost sales. Our solution offers flexible payment processing, including credit card processing and mobile payments. With decades of experience serving retailers, POS Nation aims to provide an all-in-one solution to run store operations efficiently and uncover data-driven opportunities for business growth.
Key capabilities include centralized inventory and purchase order management, customizable hotkeys for quicker checkout, 55+ built-in financial reports, employee time tracking, customer loyalty programs, barcode printing, loss prevention features, and AI-powered sales analytics. We also offer robust hardware options like handheld devices, tablets, and wireless scanners.
“I like the POS system because it is a touch screen and fairly easy to navigate. Everything is sectioned off into categories and pages, and you are able to scroll through and find what you need to find.” - Reviewer
Retail Credit Card Processing Done Right
Processing credit cards is essential to running a successful retail business today. As we've seen, the right retail credit card processing partner through your point of sale system can provide tremendous benefits beyond just credit card processing. Your POS software plays a huge role, from robust reporting to inventory insights to customer loyalty programs and more.
To enjoy the full advantages of modern retail credit card processing, it's critical to have an all-in-one point of sale system. POS Nation offers a feature-rich cloud-based solution for small and mid-sized retailers. Capabilities like real-time inventory tracking, perpetual counts, integrated reporting and analytics, flexible promotions, and much more aim to help you streamline operations, gain business insights, boost sales, and better serve your customers.
If you want to upgrade your retail technology stack, schedule a demo of POS Nation today to see our platform in action. Our team has decades of experience understanding specialty retailers' needs and is ready to show you how our software can help your business thrive now and in the future.
