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Selling in person with Shopify POS

Selling offline with Shopify POS

While eCommerce in SA is growing fast, traditional in-store shopping still rules the roost when it comes to making sales.  For this reason, it is important for any online merchant to have an offline presence too.  Whether you sell from a market stand, exhibit at expos or have a permanent store, a physical presence is a good business strategy to boost sales, develop trust and showcase your brand.

The good news is that Shopify makes it easy with Shopify POS.  Now any online merchant can have an offline presence in minutes, so you can sell from your office, your market stall, a taxi, even from your front door.  All you need is a Shopify online store and an iPad.

The process is simple, install the Shopify POS App onto your iPad, log in using your usual Shopify store details and you’re ready to go!  Information such as inventory, customer data and payments is sync’d back to your Shopify store and is all easily accessible from within your Shopify Admin.  The standard Shopify POS solution is available free to customers on the Basic plan or higher.

Shopify POS is also available with an additional ‘Retail package’ which lets you connect hardware so you can run a full cash register and issue receipts.  The Retail package is an additional monthly cost of R599 or $40 per month, but comes with a host of great features.

With the Retail package installed, you can scan product barcodes with a Bluetooth barcode scanner, keep track of staff sales, do cash ups at the end of a shift and even have multiple POS stations.  The Shopify Retail package lets you run like a professional shop and make sales quickly and easily.

Accepting Payments other than cash

When it comes to accepting payments, there are some great ways to accept credit cards on the fly.  Our favourite is a company from Cape Town called Yoco.  Yoco supplies Bluetooth card readers that come with the processing power to help you accept card payments professionally and easily without the paperwork.  Mainstream devices like Nedbank’s Pocket POS or Absa’s Payment Pebble are also available to rent from the respective banks and give you the ability to accept credit or debit card payments without hassle.  

Although none of these solutions are integrated directly with Shopify POS just yet, you can run both your POS and your card reader from the same device and simply switch between your apps to process orders and capture card payments.