As venues move toward more comprehensive digital solutions for services like ticketing, concessions and retail, it makes sense that service and product providers in the space are moving to make those deployments easier and more integrated.
To that end, point of sale solutions provider Appetize recently launched a payment-processing service, in part to help venues seeking to streamline their back-end retail systems.
“Historically, venues had to engage multiple third-party vendors to have a payment gateway and a payment processing solution to integrate into their POS platform,” said Kevin Anderson, chief strategy officer for Appetize, in an email reply to our questions. “Through our payments platform, customers get one bill, one source of support, and one account manager for all these services.”
In its press release, Appetize claims that its service will offer better pricing than third-party payment processing providers, while also bringing integrated security, future payment-technology support and the clarity of a single point of information and support “for all inquiries across payments, point of sale systems, and back of house software, gateway and processor vendors.” Appetize said that several of its POS customers have already signed up for the processing service, including TQL Stadium, the new venue just opened for Major League Soccer’s FC Cincinnati.
Market seeing more consolidation of services
The combination of POS operations and payment processing was one of the main drivers of the $72 million acquisition of app and POS software provider VenueNext by payment processing firm Shift4 this past March. According to Anderson, Appetize has been working to build its payment service for more than a year, to respond to customer requests.
“Becoming a payments company isn’t easy,” Anderson said. “Everything from the technical integration to the registration and certification process takes time and has to be done just right. We’re thrilled to be able to introduce Appetize Payments at a time when enterprise businesses are seeking this type of service.”
