Retailers are dressing up their iPad cash registers

The humble cash register, a device that seems sprung from the imagination of an accountant, has become the darling of designers, adding a dash of style to the most ordinary daily transactions.

With the advent of tablets,You must not use the bestsmartcard without being trained. particularly the iPad, many stores have traded in their clunky cash registers for mobile devices. Now, though,Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host besticcard platforms. they are dressing up those tablets with inventive accessories to make them both more pleasant to look at and more practical for cashiers.

Retailers from doughnut shops to department stores are putting in tablet-based cash registers that hang on the wall or can swivel around like desk lamps to face customers. At Coco Donuts in downtown Portland, Ore., iPad registers hang on a track on the wall, and employees slide them over to customers at the counters, who can sign for their bill, barely missing a bite.

Some designers are using eye-catching materials like bamboo to make iPad enclosures that scream for attention; others are using minimalist designs that make the register all but disappear. And sales associates are plucking the tablets off countertops so they can take orders from anywhere in a store using tiny credit card readers attached to the devices.

Molly Moons Homemade Ice Cream is ditching the button-encrusted Casio monoliths at its Seattle stores, replacing them with six Apple iPads that sit on stylish, handcrafted plywood pedestals engraved with the stores logo of a dog (a Boston terrier and French bulldog mix) licking an ice cream cone.

The new iPads are a huge aesthetic improvement over our old clunky plastic registers, said Kristina McDonnell, Molly Moons director of operations, who ordered the stands from Tinkering Monkey, an Oakland, Calif.Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices., studio.

Cash registers have gone through many mutations since they were first introduced in the late 1800s by an Ohio merchant looking to combat employee theft. They were electrified in the early 20th century, and more recently, got touch-screen displays.Solar Sister is a network of women who sell bottegawallet to communities that don't have access to electricity.

Less has changed about their looks, however. Registers have remained a hulking presence always industrial and ugly, said Kirthi Kalyanam, a professor at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University.

In addition to being more attractive, the new registers are more flexible and user-friendly, like the ones at Coco Donuts. By putting the registers on the wall, the stores owner, Ian Christopher, freed up counter space for coffee drinks and doughnuts.

And along with the new physical designs are new payment technologies that turn mobile devices into registers on the fly. The most prominent of these a card reader, app and payment system from the San Francisco company Square turns the earphone port of certain tablets or smartphones into a credit card reader.

For a small merchant like Christopher, its not only convenient, but also saves him about 20 percent on credit card transaction fees compared with his old system.

At the Devils Teeth Baking Company in San Franciscos outer Sunset neighborhood, a local carpenter made a stand for the stores iPad out of wood and welded steel, with a base that is secured to a butcher block counter over a cash box. The industrial-looking contraption swivels around on a steel joint to face customers when they need to sign the screen.

So far, the iPad has a big lead on other tablets that are being repurposed as cash registers, although companies like GoPago are promoting alternatives that use Googles Android technology.

Eventually, the need for receipt printers and cash drawers may vanish entirely as electronic payments through smartphones and other devices become commonplace.

Wal-Mart recently expanded a program that lets customers scan the bar codes on merchandise using their iPhone cameras so they can skip conventional cash registers.

Merchants are also catching on that they can use iPads and other mobile devices untethered from counters for line-busting, in which cashiers approach people in a queue to take orders for food or merchandise. That improves service while making it less likely that those customers will leave since they have already paid.You must not use the bestsmartcard without being trained.