What is a POS?
A POS (point of sale) is a computer which is connected to a receipt printer, cash drawer, credit/debit card reader and a bar code scanner etc.
Companies and retailers can enhance shoppers’ user experience by having different payment methods aside from using only physical cash, which can become limiting in the increasingly cashless world. That’s because of options now available such as Android Pay & Apple pay, making shopping easier and faster.
Why is rigorous testing of POS systems important?
Retail is an extremely competitive business, where customers can write off a company based on any factor that rubs them the wrong way. A POS can be one of those key differentiators because a bad POS system can make a shopper’s experience slow and redundant, and lower efficiency for the business.
Below are just some of the reasons why not testing POS systems is cause for concern:
- Risks of incorrect inventory records and thefts by employees
- Difficulty tracking promotions, discounts, and coupons
- Erroneous Sales reports would create incorrect inventory levels making it challenging to control cost
- More staff would need to man more POS terminals if the process is slow and unreliable, creating a buildup of customers waiting to checkout
- Incorrect loyalty member data would create a loss of business due to non-repeating customers
How we test this:
At 3Qi Labs we use Awetest to run an automated test and use an NFC reader to act as the POS system reading the chip on a phone. To completely automate the process we use uArm to act as the POS operator. This whole process allows for a completely automated quality assurance (QA) process, meaning that it can be scaled up to mass numbers of testing. With our cost-effective solution to POS testing we help retailers achieve faster validation cycles.
Below is a video demonstrating the use of Awetest to perform an automated test that runs uArm to carry out a test transaction through a POS terminal
