Last October, we had the opportunity to be an exhibitor at one of the largest annual convenient store events, NACS Show (National Association of Convenience Stores) for the first time. It was held in McCormick Place, Chicago from 6th October till 8th October 2021.
It was a great opportunity for us to showcase our cloud edge-computing based Fuel Retail POS Solution. At RONPOS, our solution not only includes front-end fuel retail POS, as we also provide back-end, in-house loyalty app, customer display system, e-commerce platform and so much more tools for fuel retailers.
Throughout the 3 days occassion, we received a lot of positive feedbacks and interest from all around incuding many payment solution providers, gas station owners, fuel companies and system integrators. “We have never seen such beautiful and user-friendly POS in the fuel retail industry”, said one of the gas station owners who visited our booth. “This is the most authentic cloud-based POS system I have seen so far, we are really interested to do a direct integration with your POS system”, said one of the major payment companies in the industry.
As we spoke to more gas station owners and fuel retailers during the event, we found out that currently they are facing a few challenges and problems with their existing POS system in the US market.
Problems/Challenges
1. Proprietary Hardware
Most POS vendor in the US market uses proprietary hardware. Even if the claims are cloud-based/software based, gas station owners are still required to use proprietary hardware provided by the POS vendors, as their software does not work with other brands/model hardware. The problem with proprietary hardware is that when it comes to hardware issues, fuel retailers are required to contact the existing vendor to repair/get replacement, which involves extra cost and time. Most importantly, there will be expected downtime for at least 30 minutes to repair/replace the hardware. Not to mention that proprietary hardware always has a much higher cost of ownership.
2. Not improving in the last 10 years ago
Gas station owners and fuel retailers have been making complaints and requesting the existing POS vendors to improve their features and functions such as integrated e-wallet payment system, EMV integrated, supporting EV charging and many more. However, there seem to be little to no improvement has been made since. One of the reasons is that these existing POS vendors use proprietary and legacy APIs and in effort to monopolize the market, hence it is not easy to integrate with any third-party system like loyalty apps, e-wallet, or EV solutions.
3. Long Contract term
We have been made aware that, most fuel retailers must sign a 10 to 15 years contract when purchasing these POS systems together with the pump dispensers and fuel controllers. This limits fuel retailers ability to change or choose other POS system as they like, during the contract period even when they are not happy with the current POS system.
What RONPOS offers
1. Agnostic Hardware/Purely Software-Cloud based
RONPOS solution is purely software centric, and cloud-based. It works on any iOS or Android OS devices. Owners can choose whichever brand or model or table of POS terminal as they like from the open market as long as it fulfils the minimum requirement of hardware specification.
This means that if the hardware is faulty, there’s no need to source the hardware from a specific vendor to repair/replace it, as it can be easily obtained from the market. As a cloud-based system, no data will be stored in the POS terminal/tablet itself, which means if the hardware is being stolen or faulty, no data is lost.
Once the new POS terminal/tablet is replaced, it will take less than 30 minutes to restore all the data and configuration settings at the station without any experts to be on-site. The hardware (POS terminal/tablet) is low cost, according to our market research it is at least 3 times cheaper than a proprietary hardware having the same level of performance.
2. Innovative technology (Future proof)
RONPOS adapts the Open-API technology. We have direct integration with various payment companies and can accept e-wallets. It is highly customizable based on customer needs, no matter how many stations are being run by the business.
We have our in-house loyalty application, e-commerce platform which offers end user to order food and drinks before arriving at the station and collect them at the counter. This can highly reduce waiting time and retain more loyal customers. Besides, we have been developing on integrating with smart CCTV to do more business analytics, car plate recognition and automated marketing to give end user a more seamless fueling experience.
Lastly, we have been integrating with EV charges, and ready to serve the market when gas stations plan to install or transform into EV charging stations.
3. No Contract. Subscription based
At RONPOS, we do not force any customer to sign any long-term contract. We believe that our monthly subscription-based program is more suitable for most fuel retailers. Our customers are free to terminate the subscription if need to.
However, we are confident that you will never stop the service once you have given it a try.
Conclusion
RONPOS is a fast growing POS vendor and we are excited to expand internationally. Hence, we are actively looking for partners, resellers/distributors, system integrators, or any local payment solution providers to go-to market together. If you are interested to be our partner or to understand more details of our system, please do contact us here.
Overall, we have learned so much from NACS 2021, we will soon be back for NACS 2022 in Vegas next year. Meanwhile, we will be exhibiting in NRF, an event in New York in January 2022. Please feel free to meet us there, see you!
