To stay competitive, you need more than a digital cash box—you need a real-time command center that brings together physical storefronts and digital back ends.
Unlike traditional registers, which function as isolated terminals, an electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) system integrates hardware with cloud-based software to enable unified commerce. It puts the most important parts of your business at your fingertips. With the right combination of point-of-sale (POS) hardware and software, your team can manage stock, maintain customer relationships, generate reports, finalize sales, and more.
So what exactly is an EPOS system? How does it work? And what are the benefits of using an EPOS system in retail? Let’s answer these questions and look at the types of EPOS systems available to you, with tips on how to choose the best EPOS system for your business.
What is an EPOS system?
An EPOS (electronic point of sale) is a digital checkout and till system. It includes hardware such as card readers and payment terminals, and software that processes payments, tracks inventory, and performs other essential retail functions.
Using an EPOS system, you can efficiently complete transactions and monitor retail activity from a single device—even if you sell across multiple locations and channels.
EPOS software
With the right EPOS software, you can update your inventory in real time, while keeping customer data secure. Most tools also contain a reporting function, along with other third-party integrations.
Plus, some mobile EPOS systems, like the Shopify POS app, are available for iOS and Android, so you can process payments on handheld devices without additional hardware.
Common EPOS software features include:
- An intuitive payment process for customers
- Ecommerce and brick-and-mortar integration
- Order and inventory syncing
- Out-of-stock alerts
- Purchase order management and automation
- Analytics for visibility into staff performance and product trends
Many platforms are now layering AI over this data to move beyond simple descriptions. These systems can predict future demand, recommend restocking levels, and even flag unusual refund patterns to help prevent fraud.
EPOS hardware
EPOS hardware is the devices that customers and retailers use to buy and sell products.
Hardware can be as simple as a card reader combined with a phone app to process orders and accept payments. For a more permanent solution, you might choose to use a barcode scanner, a Bluetooth receipt printer, or a cash drawer.
Many retail stores use a touchscreen EPOS at the counter to quickly process card payments. Some systems (including Shopify) will also allow you to use an iPad to run your store.
Common EPOS hardware devices include:
- Touchscreen terminal
- Tap and chip card reader
- Bar code scanner
- Receipt printer
- Cash drawer
💡Tip: Skip the need for hardware with Shopify Tap to Pay. It turns your mobile device into a credit card reader, so you can operate your entire store from your smartphone.
EPOS payments
With the right EPOS, you can accept credit and debit cards, contactless payments, mobile payments, and online orders. Plus, because all transactions are tracked within the same system, an EPOS makes bookkeeping more efficient than using traditional cash registers.
Shopify Payments is the fastest way to start accepting payments in-person, online, and on the go. It’s included in all Shopify EPOS plans, so you can skip lengthy third-party activations and go from setup to selling faster.
EPOS system vs. POS system: Are they the same?
The terms EPOS and POS refer to the same type of digital payments system, which offers more advanced capabilities than a traditional cash register or shop till.
- POS. Stands for “point of sale.” It handles basic in-store transactions but doesn’t connect your inventory, customer data, or online sales.
- EPOS. The “E” marks the jump from old-school mechanical registers to computerized systems. It’s a networked system that integrates payments, inventory, customer data, and online channels into a single, electronic ecosystem. For example, a retailer might use a digital EPOS touchscreen terminal that automatically updates stock levels and syncs with their ecommerce site.
How does an EPOS system work?
An EPOS system lets you accept in-person payments, track sales, and manage inventory, without the hassle and potential inaccuracies of manual reporting. It allows customers to pay for their orders with payment methods such as cash, credit and debit cards, and even mobile payment, improving the transaction process and giving customers options.
Here’s how an EPOS system works:
- When a retailer enters product information into an EPOS (or scans a barcode), the system calculates the amount that a customer needs to pay.
- Once a transaction is made, stock levels will instantly be adjusted in your inventory management system (IMS). This allows your team to process payments and respond to questions around stock in a more efficient manner.
- At the same time, the EPOS records sales and customer data.
With accurate information at your fingertips, you can run different types of reports any time. EPOS data reports cover customer loyalty program information, sales, stock figures, and employee productivity, reflecting real-time business performance.
The benefits of using an EPOS till system in retail
There’s a good reason that retail EPOS systems are becoming ubiquitous. They’re the future of retail, with standard cash registers becoming a thing of the past.
You’ve already seen some of the benefits of EPOS, but let’s take a closer look.
1. Accept payments anywhere in your store
Imagine you’re browsing through a boutique. Your eyes land on a shirt that matches your style, but you’re unsure about the fabric or the fit. You approach a sales assistant who assures you of the high-quality material and finds your perfect size.
Convinced, you decide it’s time to buy. The assistant presents a mobile card reader. You tap your card and voila! The shirt is now yours—no need to wait in line elsewhere before purchasing.
Finalizing sales on the shop floor is possible with an EPOS system—streamlining customer experience and removing barriers for your store staff.
“It’s really easy for a sales associate to hop on the mobile POS, ring someone up even at the dressing room, walk them out of the store, making the whole experience super seamless,” says James Bishop, director of retail at AG Jeans.
2. Make informed business decisions with powerful reporting
Once you’ve started making sales using an EPOS system, you’re going to want to know what’s working and what isn’t.
An EPOS can help you answer questions like:
- Which staff members are selling the most?
- Which locations are thriving?
- What time periods create the best opportunities for sales?
- What type of customer keeps returning?
Most EPOS systems offer an overview of your business for a quick snapshot of online and in-store activities. The best systems also create retail sales reports, cash tracking, cash flow reports, product reports, discount reports, inventory reports, financial reports, and more.
3. Succeed at omnichannel selling
It’s rare for customers to shop only online or only in-store. Most are omnichannel—they jump between your online store, social media storefronts, and retail locations, often within a single purchase decision.
According to a 2025 study from Deloitte, retail executives cited enhancing omnichannel experiences as a top priority, as omnichannel shoppers spend 1.5 times more.
A good EPOS lets you deliver seamless shopping experiences as they switch between channels. For example, with a unified EPOS system, you can:
- Allow customers to buy items online and schedule in-store pickup
- Save lost sales caused by stockouts by checking available inventory and sending an item directly to your customer, with shipping calculated at checkout
- Use the in-store EPOS to process a refund, issue store credit, or exchange items bought online—or vice versa—without causing inaccuracies in your inventory management system
Home furnishings brand Parachute, for example, uses Shopify POS to unify their sales channels. They processed 1,300 buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) orders in the final quarter of 2024 alone—all while saving more than $1 million in annual operational costs.
“Being able to leverage Shopify’s buy online, pickup in-store feature actually allows us to tell our online customers that we even have stores,” says Meg Marsh, Parachute’s SVP of operations. “This allows us to drive traffic to the stores where we know that customers have a really great experience.”
💡Tip: To get started, enable in-store pickup availability in the Shopify admin to show online shoppers whether a product is available for pickup at one of your stores.
4. Spend less time on inventory admin
A good EPOS system will offer purchase order suggestions based on recent product performance or seasonality. It will also tell you when stock is running low, based on vendor lead times and your current rate of sales. And if certain products are regularly performing badly and taking up inventory storage space, your system will alert you.
The benefits of these inventory tools extend to checkout. With the right EPOS system, it’s easy to categorize products by type, seasonality, and promotions, so cashiers can quickly ring up orders and breeze through checkout.
“Unifying online and in-store inventory was essential for Cabana,” says Francesco Mura, co-founder and CTO of Cabana magazine. “We set up Shopify POS with centralized, real-time inventory tracking—so even if a product wasn’t on display, store staff could immediately locate it or ship it from another channel. This eliminated manual cross-referencing and significantly reduced overhead, allowing staff to focus entirely on the customer experience.”
5. Increase sales from satisfied customers
As your sales associate adds a product to a sale, their EPOS software flashes with a relevant upsell. It meets the customer’s needs, so they decide to purchase it, increasing your per-order revenue. That’s one way that an EPOS increases sales and customer satisfaction.
Other retention-building EPOS features include:
- Automatic tax calculations
- Easy discounting
- Email or SMS receipts
“One of our favorite Shopify POS features is adding notes to a customer’s profile to store information like their favorite colors, ideal size, or a product they’re excited about from our new collection,” says Joanna Puccio, assistant store manager at Diane von Furstenburg. “Those qualitative insights really help us make them feel like we’re their personal stylist the next time they shop with us.”
6. Improve customer loyalty
Use your EPOS to build unified customer profiles with every in-store or online purchase. It compiles data such as:
- Purchase history
- Order status
- Returned items
- Loyalty rewards
- Carts abandoned
For example, as your sales associate pulls up a customer’s unified profile, they can see what the customer has previously purchased and how many loyalty points they’ve accumulated. They use this information to strategically upsell—perhaps recommending a new product that complements one they already own, or using their loyalty points as partial payment.
Plus, with the customer lists you’re building, you’ll have more opportunities to reach out post-purchase. You can email, SMS, or call customers with relevant, personalized promotions to retain more of the customers you’ve already acquired.
7. Integrate with apps and tools
Most EPOS systems are compatible with apps and tools to give customers real-time responses to their questions. You could integrate an app dedicated to loyalty and rewards or store pickup and delivery apps that schedule click and collect pickup times, control local delivery zones, and set delivery rates.
💡Tip: With Shopify, it’s easy to customize your EPOS and extend its capabilities. Find apps built by our trusted partners in the Shopify App Store for almost anything, from counting foot traffic to launching a loyalty program.
8. Stay competitive with innovative payment technology
With the right EPOS, you can easily manage your cash flow. Accept all popular payment methods and know exactly what the fees are for each. Even if your customer wants to put down a deposit or pay with a gift card, you’ll be able to accommodate them.
Shopify Payments is the fastest way to start accepting payments in-person, online, and on the go. It’s included in all Shopify EPOS plans, so you can skip lengthy third-party activations and go from setup to selling faster.
9. Streamline staff management
Your staff also have different roles and will, in turn, need access to different areas of your EPOS. Managers might need to make approvals. Warehouse staff might need to check on deliveries.
With Shopify’s EPOS system, for example, you can assign different roles and permissions for what staff can do in your system without manager approval—like changing a product’s price or applying a custom discount to a sale.
You’ll also want to track performance, whether it’s in sales or another area of the business. Shopify POS lets you assign staff IDs to attribute sales, so you can provide commissions or kudos and prioritize training for low performers.
Types of EPOS systems
As the popularity of EPOS systems grows, so do the options available to retailers to host their software. Let’s take a look at three types of EPOS systems.
| EPOS type | Who it’s for | Key strengths | Trade-offs | Good fit examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional EPOS | Larger merchants with multiple stores and high daily volume | Built for all-day, every-day transactions, robust in-store operations, often supports complex setups | More hardware to buy/maintain, less flexible to move around | Busy retail stores, multilocation shops, high-throughput counters |
| Mobile EPOS | Selling on the go, pop-ups, markets, events | Fast to set up, highly portable, can handle many tasks of traditional EPOS | Smaller screen, less processing power, can feel cramped at higher volume | Markets, festivals, curbside selling, roaming staff on the floor |
| Tablet EPOS | Growing merchants needing mobility and higher throughput | More screen space and more processing power than mobile, better for increasing transaction counts | Still more connectivity-dependent than traditional, not as rugged as fixed setups | Boutiques scaling up, busy pop-ups, small stores with multiple checkout points |
Traditional EPOS
Mainly targeted at larger merchants, a traditional multistore EPOS system is an all-in-one solution featuring a range of hardware. EPOS systems like these don’t rely as heavily on an internet connection, which makes them a good option for businesses that process transactions all day, every day.
Mobile EPOS
Mobile EPOS systems are perfect for selling on the go. Download software (like the Shopify POS app) to your smartphone, purchase a card machine, and you’re all set. They can be linked to mobile card readers and printers if needed and can perform many of the tasks a traditional EPOS can.
Tablet EPOS
Tablet EPOS systems work in a similar way to mobile EPOS systems. The main difference is that tablets have more processing power, so they are the better option if your business is starting to process a larger number of transactions.
How to choose the best EPOS system for your retail business
Current and future needs
It’s important to invest in a system that meets your unique needs, so work out exactly what you need your new EPOS to do ahead of time. Consider the challenges you’re facing with your current point-of-sale system, if you have one. Start with why you’re switching retail tech, and go from there.
Then, take a look at your business goals and how an EPOS will help you meet them. Your projected growth is going to hugely impact your needs. You might not need certain EPOS features today, but you could rely on them in five to 10 years.
For example, if you plan to open a second location, you’ll need a vendor with multistore POS capabilities and customizable staff permissions. If you plan to host pop-ups, you’ll need a portable card reader that you can take with you for each event.
Other important POS features include:
- Ecommerce integration
- Native payment processing
- Loyalty programs
- Email marketing integration
- Staff tracking
- Fulfillment options
As for hardware, think about whether you need physical devices or can use those you already own. For example, if you’re on a tight budget, consider a mobile-based EPOS system that turns your smartphone into a retail POS system.
💡Tip: Shopify is the only platform to unify POS and ecommerce on the same platform. This gives you one central operating system for every aspect of business operations—without patchy middleware or expensive custom integrations typically required to unify customer, inventory, and sales data.
Pricing and available features
As with any purchase for your business, you’ll need to balance EPOS pricing with value offered. You’ll have a budget, and the EPOS system you choose will need to fit within it—but there are several factors to think about when it comes to pricing.
Software fees
Whether monthly or yearly, there’s usually an EPOS software fee that varies depending on the plan you choose. Opt for a plan with more features and you’ll pay a higher monthly fee, but those features might also save you money or help you bring in more revenue over time.
Remember, with software, there are more opportunities to upgrade later if you have the right hardware to support your future needs. You might need a basic plan to cover the retail store you’re running today but you’ll want to upgrade to a higher tier plan when you expand into a bigger storefront or more locations.
Hardware investment
EPOS system costs will vary by the number of stores and staff you have, and the payment types you want to accept. Since upgrading hardware can be costly, one option is to mitigate lease hardware at the start of your business endeavor.
Payment processing fees
Every time you make a transaction, your payment card processor charges a fee. Depending on the card processor you use and the card your customer uses, the amount you pay can vary.
Some of the best EPOS providers—including Shopify POS—offer integrated payment processing. This takes away the risk of hidden costs. You’ll pay the same rate for all cards so you can forecast your cash flow.
Free and paid features
Consider whether you need add-ons, apps, and tools to make your shortlisted EPOS systems work the way you want it to.
Cheaper EPOS vendors may only offer basic reporting and order fulfillment options for free. If you need to pay extra for advanced inventory management add-ons, confirm the total cost of ownership (TCO) to ensure that initial savings don’t represent a false economy.
Ease of use
Features that solve your store’s sales and inventory problems are great—if your staff can use them.
When choosing the best EPOS system for your business, make sure it’s appropriate for your staff’s retail skill level. For example, if a software developer is needed to maintain your EPOS system, it might not be the right choice for a local coffee shop.
“We train our retail staff not only on POS but the full online experience as well, which helps them understand how everything like order processing, refunds, and promotions work,” says Mike Wu, Monos’s director of ecommerce and customer experience. “Having it all on the same platform makes it much easier to connect the dots and gain a full understanding of the business, which results in better customer service.”
Another usability factor to consider is mobility. For some retailers, there’s no issue with tethering an EPOS to a checkout counter. Others, however, will greatly benefit from a mobile system to sell wherever customers are.
Get started with your retail EPOS system
Now you know what an EPOS system is, how it works, and the benefits it can bring, you’re ready to make decisions about your business’s growth. A retail EPOS system could be the key to unlocking more value from your daily activities.
EPOS system FAQ
What is the difference between an EPOS and a POS?
EPOS stands for “electronic point of sale,” while POS stands for “point of sale.” Both terms refer to the same technology. They are digital payment systems that enable businesses to process payments, interact with customers, and store data. They are often used in retail stores, restaurants, hotels, and other service businesses.
Why is EPOS important for retailers?
EPOS is important for retailers because it allows them to quickly and accurately process transactions, manage inventory, track sales and customer data, and provide customer service. It also makes it easier for retailers to run promotions and loyalty programs.
What features should a modern EPOS system include?
A modern EPOS unifies your online and in-store sales, inventory, and customer data into one real-time view. It should be mobile-friendly to let you sell anywhere and use built-in analytics to catch trends or low stock instantly. It should automate manual tasks like reconciliation.
How much does an EPOS system cost?
EPOS costs include software ($0–$100 per month), hardware ($1,000–$2,000 upfront), and payment fees (avg. 2.4% + 10¢). For example, Shopify POS Pro is $89 per month per location. Small setups are affordable, while multistore retailers pay more for advanced tools.
Can EPOS systems be integrated with online stores?
Modern EPOS systems integrate with online stores to sync products, inventory, and customer data across channels in near real time. These systems also streamline merchant services, ensuring that credit card processing is seamless whether customers use chip credit cards in-store or pay online.
