GoTab’s Phone Only Point-of-Sale App Debuts

Hospitality point-of-sale system provider GoTab Inc.’s latest product, billed as Phone Only POS, accepts payments on consumer-grade smart phones. It also makes it easier for consumers to pay at the table, GoTab says.

The service enables clients to accept contactless credit or debit cards for payment without the need of a dedicated card reader. In a video, Tim McLaughlin, cofounder and chief executive of Arlington, Va.-based GoTab, demonstrated an open tab being paid by holding a contactless card against the back of a smart phone. He says the service is available now for Android devices and will be available for iPhone. GoTab says it will be available for iOS devices later in January.

The Phone Only POS relies on tap-to-pay applications for Android and iPhone, GoTab says. The new service, however, incorporates more than payments and can “run a full restaurant/retail operation on a phone and take the payment,” a GoTab spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News.

The GoTab app for the Phone Only POS enables servers to enter orders, update them, and handle all payments from the app. The app also can allow diners or bar patrons pay their tabs when the server puts the app in payment mode and hands the device to the customer. The app’s screen automatically rotates so it faces the customer without having to rotate the phone. Then, the customer verifies the payment amount, including a tip, and holds a credit or debit card against the phone to pay. The screen is protected by a PIN so the customer cannot navigate off it.

“With the Phone Only POS, we saw a need in the market for operators to be able to process payments without a card reader, allowing team members to quickly process payments from a pocket-size mobile device on-the-go,” McLaughlin says in a statement.

GoTab says there is no additional cost to the merchant for the Phone Only POS feature. “A full restaurant on GoTab costs $99 monthly, and that includes POS, kitchen/bar operations with [kitchen display system], inventory, accounting integrations, pricing engine, messaging, and a lot more,” GoTab says. “We are in the process of releasing a slimmed-down product, which is $19 per month if a business just needs basic POS [plus] accounting integrations.”

Tap-to-pay features on Android and iPhone devices rely on technology that has been developed separately for both operating systems to let merchants accept card transactions directly on the device, eliminating the need for a card reader attachment.

In September, GoTab launched its Pocket POS feature, which uses a wireless card reader connected to a smart phone.