For years, software devs serving retail, restaurant, and hospitality customers have watched payment revenue flow past them to hardware resellers and payment processors. If you build a point of sale (POS) platform, a clienteling app, or a field service tool that already runs on a tablet or handheld, you’re sitting closer to that revenue than you might think. A panel at BlueStar’s VARTECH 2026 in Connecticut, made the case that software-based point of sale (SoftPOS) has quietly lowered the barrier for exactly this kind of move.
The panel brought together Gary Dalton of MicroTouch, Duffy Fron of Toshiba Global Commerce, Andrew Cole of Felix Payment Systems, and Jamie Mitchell of BlueStar EMEA. Their shared message: the payments business isn’t as walled off as it used to be, and software vendors already embedded in a customer’s workflow have an opening.
What SoftPOS means for your product roadmap
At its core, SoftPOS digitizes the payment terminal. Cole described it this way on the panel: a traditional terminal has a functional element and a security element built into dedicated hardware. SoftPOS takes those same pieces and turns them into software that runs on devices your customers already own. Any near field communication (NFC)-capable tablet, phone, or Android handheld can become a certified payment terminal for contactless transactions, without your customer buying a separate $300 to $800 payment box.
For your product, that means payment acceptance can become a feature inside the software you already sell, rather than a hardware add-on your customer sources from someone else. It’s the difference between watching a payment processor own that relationship and owning it yourself.
The certification layers you can’t skip
None of this loosens the compliance requirements. Mitchell was direct about it: “SoftPOS doesn’t circumvent payment certification requirements. It still has to be governed and apply to the same rules that govern traditional payment terminals.” What changes is where certification lives. Traditional terminals require certification at the hardware and software layers separately. With SoftPOS, certification consolidates at the application level, which is what makes this reachable for a software company rather than a hardware manufacturer.
Three Europay, Mastercard, and Visa (EMV) levels matter here. Level 1 covers the hardware itself, the NFC reader, antenna placement, and card-read accuracy. Level 2 covers the kernel, governing how your software talks to the acquirer, and Level 3 covers the end-to-end connection to the bank. On top of that sits the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which every SoftPOS deployment still has to satisfy. Dalton cautioned that not all hardware on the market actually holds EMV Level 1 certification despite being marketed as payment-ready, so vetting a vendor’s actual certifications isn’t optional.
The market case for embedding payments now
The numbers back up the urgency. Cole cited Visa figures showing contactless transactions at roughly 19% of volume in 2020 and 2021, climbing to more than 80% today, which he called the fastest-growing trend in payments. Mitchell pointed to Juniper Research projections putting SoftPOS-enabled devices in Europe at around 28.5 million today, growing to 46 million by 2030, with retail accounting for 42% of that deployment base.
The hardware side backs this up independently. Counterpoint Research puts Android at 48% of POS terminals shipped in 2025, up from near zero a decade ago, and projects it will reach roughly 70% of global shipments by 2032 as native NFC support makes it the simpler platform for payment applications. That’s a steadier climb than the 85% the panel projected, but it points the same direction: the devices your software already runs on are becoming payment-capable by default.
Proof points from the field
Felix Payment Systems worked with luggage retailer Away to replace bulkier mobile devices with tap-to-pay hardware across its store associates, a six-month rollout now running at roughly 90% adoption. Mitchell described a UK deployment with tote-betting operator Britbet, where SoftPOS on handheld devices cut queue bottlenecks during high-volume race windows and grew into a 1,600-unit rollout of fixed customer-facing displays. Felix also cited the first SoftPOS deployment on a Windows device, at Nebraska Furniture Mart, displacing a tablet-and-Bluetooth-dongle setup entirely. Dalton pointed to an upcoming rollout with Circle K, requesting NFC support on 27-inch kiosk screens, with an initial deployment of 3,000 to 4,000 units expected.
Deciding how to get there
The panel’s advice converged on one idea: partner rather than build from scratch. As Mitchell put it, “You’ve got three choices, build, buy, or partner, and partner is the only accelerated play.” For an ISV, that means vetting payment vendors on certification scope specifically (some cover only the payment kernel, others handle the full stack through to the bank), prioritizing vendors that support multiple operating systems so you’re not locked into one hardware path, and consolidating support down to a single point of contact wherever you can.
The bigger issue is timing. Cole noted that vendors already selling NFC-capable devices into retail for inventory management or clienteling are often having the payments conversation with someone else entirely, simply because the hardware wasn’t originally positioned as a payment device. If your software already runs on that hardware, that’s revenue sitting one integration away, and it’s worth closing that gap before another vendor closes it for you.
