mobile-pos
(6)
The Card Reader Disappears: CPOS Bets the Smallest Merchants Will Tap Their Phones
The Ottawa payments company spent a decade selling the machinery of checkout. Now its most interesting product removes the machine - and asks small merchants to trust the phone already in their pocket.
Mad Mobile Put the Cash Register on a Phone. Now It Wants to Rewrite the Store Around It.
The Tampa company spent 15 years making old commerce systems mobile. A pandemic-era POS acquisition, $70 million in financing, and a new bet on agentic AI have turned that integration trick into a much bigger ambition.
inyad
inyad is a Moroccan-founded fintech building mobile-first software for small and micro merchants across Africa and the Middle East. Its apps - the Konnash digital ledger and the Mahaal all-in-one point-of-sale, invoicing and payments platform - help corner shops, cafes, salons and independent traders move their bookkeeping, sales and payments off paper and onto a phone. Founded in 2018 by former McKinsey consultant Moncef Chlouchi, the company reports a user base in the millions across 10-plus countries and has raised roughly $14M from investors including Partech, Al Mada Ventures, CDG Invest and FJ Labs.
Nearpay
Nearpay is a Riyadh-based fintech that turns any NFC-equipped smartphone into a payment terminal. Its payment-infrastructure-as-a-service platform gives banks, payment providers and developers a certified SoftPOS (tap-to-phone) SDK plus the full stack behind it - acceptance, compliance, certification, reconciliation and merchant dashboards - so businesses can accept in-person card payments in about 30 minutes without dedicated hardware. Founded in 2020, Nearpay was one of the first companies certified under Visa's tap-to-phone program, processed more than 40 million transactions in 2024, and in 2025 became the first Saudi payments fintech to expand into the United States.
NewStore
NewStore is a Boston-based retail technology company that gives brands a mobile-first, cloud platform to run their physical stores. Its modular Omnichannel-as-a-Service bundles an order management system, iPhone-based point of sale, inventory, store fulfillment, clienteling, and native consumer apps into one system, letting store associates check out shoppers, look up inventory, and fulfill online orders from a single device. Founded in 2015 by e-commerce pioneer Stephan Schambach, NewStore serves brands such as Burton, Marine Layer, Vince, Clarks, and G-Star Raw across more than 40 countries.
GlossGenius
GlossGenius is a New York-based vertical SaaS and fintech platform that gives independent beauty and wellness professionals - hair stylists, nail techs, estheticians, spas and medspas - one app to run the whole business. It combines online booking, a built-in card-processing POS, client CRM, marketing automation, payroll, inventory and AI agents, replacing the patchwork of spreadsheets, paper books and generic tools that solo operators and small salons relied on. Founded in 2016 by Danielle Cohen-Shohet, it crossed roughly $100M in revenue, serves tens of thousands of businesses, and reached unicorn status with a reported $1.12B valuation after its January 2026 Series D.