To date, e-commerce has had the advantage of being on a constant path of innovation, while brick-and-mortar stores have been slower to adopt new technologies. As e-commerce gains ground, this distinction between the two channels has never been more apparent.

A big obstacle to progress within the brick-and-mortar sector is the payment industry’s closed POS ecosystem. While e-commerce platforms like Magento and Shopify promote development of new tools by having open APIs, it’s been a tougher road to get POS companies to let developers build and scale alongside them.

Luckily, companies like Verifone, Ingenico, Aevi, Poynt and Clover have taken the lead by producing smart terminals that offer applications through their own respective marketplaces. They’ve been able to offer bundles of free and paid apps by making APIs available to select partners. However, until outside developers are given access to the APIs without the hurdle of establishing partnerships, the open standards of e-commerce will always have a leg up.

At TruRating, we’ve established many partnerships in the payment space and, happily, it has paid off greatly. We’re working with 80-90% of payment platforms and we’re proud to offer our application in their marketplaces. What we’d love to see is an awakening of the whole industry to the benefits of collaborative development, because until that happens, e-commerce will have an advantage when it comes to innovation.

For more info, read our full article in PCM-Volume 3, Issue 10.

Luca Eandi