Clover, Square, And Epos Now Top a Javelin Ranking of POS Systems for Small Businesses

The days of placing a point-of-sale terminal on a small business’s countertop and calling it enough have long passed. Now, as these merchants—defined as having less than $1 million in annual sales—want just as much varied payment acceptance and operational software sophistication as much larger ones, Javelin Strategy & Research has released a scorecard for small-business POS systems.

In the inaugural “2025 Small-Business Point-of-Sale System Scorecard,” which evaluated POS platforms in four key areas, Fiserv Inc.’s Clover was declared the best-in-class provider, with Square and Epos Now as overall leaders. Ten vendors were included in the evaluation.

The areas studied were the flexibility to support diverse merchant types and needs, the ability to support an omnichannel environment, the availability of value-added service, and the support for connections for third-party apps and services, explains Don Apgar, Javelin director of merchant payments.

Smaller merchants have a desire and demand for breadth and depth in the POS systems they choose, he says. “Our research found that there are two key dimensions to POS platforms in this small-business segment,” Apgar says.

“Breadth of features enables banks and [independent sales organizations] to acquire merchants in a wide variety of market verticals. For example, the needs of a pizza shop versus a self-storage merchant versus a bike shop, all look for features specific to their businesses. Having a very broad feature set enables the bank or ISO to sell the platform to the greatest number of merchants,” he says.

Having a depth of features can help aid retention. “Depth of features drives retention, as the merchant grows, they want to get more sophisticated in how they manage the business and look for deeper customization within their feature sets. The deeper the feature sets, the longer you will retain the merchant before they outgrow the platform,” Apgar says.

“Think about a restaurant who buys a Clover or Square when they open, now has three locations plus delivery and needs a more robust platform to run their business. The more customizable the Clover or Square is, the longer the merchant can wait to upgrade.”

The Javelin scorecard also included platforms that had “out-of-the-box” products for three main business segments—retail, restaurant, and services—Apgar says.