Terminal Makers Unleash a Variety of Product And Service Introductions As NRF Opens

Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group is among many payments companies making announcements Monday at the National Retail Federation’s annual Big Show in New York City.

France-based Ingenico says its ePayments division and its research arm Ingenico Labs now offer payment-enabled messaging bots for e-commerce merchants. Bots are an artificial intelligence technology. Ingenico says its bot service is linked to messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Line, Kik, Skype, and WeChat. More than 3 billion consumers worldwide have an account with one or more messaging apps, Ingenico reports.

Ingenico also made other announcements, including the debut of the Lane/7000 POS terminal. And weight-loss program Jenny Craig will use Ingenico’s iPP 350 smart terminal for payment acceptance at all of company-owned and franchised locations in the U.S.

Terminal makers Equinox Payments and VeriFone Systems Inc. also made news at the NRF event. Equinox launched its Luxe 6000m, which consists of a base device the size of a smart phone. The device, which supports mag-stripe, EMV, and NFC transactions, can accommodate attachable power and printer modules.

As for VeriFone, the German retailer Bartels-Langness Handelsgesellschaft, known as Bela, will install more than 100 VeriFone MX925 multimedia devices in its food-store chain, Familia, which offers self-scanning along with payments at all of its stores.