
Show HN: We made a web-based cash register - thinkcomp
https://www.facecash.com/register.html
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pshapiro
This is a great idea in part because of the incredible stagnation in the
upgrade path for a restaurant's POS technology. In my experience the entire
hardware+software system gets upgraded only once every 5-10 years at a typical
restaurant. Probably because the two (hardware and software) are sold
together, making upgrades a big investment.

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tbgvi
Welcome to the club, my company Cashier Live (<http://www.cashierlive.com>)
has been at this for about a year now. We're focused on retail, and from what
I can see here you're focused on restaurant/quick serve. This is a great idea
to help get your payments product adopted.

One thing you'll run in to when you have merchants actually using this is a
crushing load of feature requests and support. Since you're using
Authorize.net for card payments, right away you'll have store owners
complaining that their fees are higher than they used to be. (Maybe that's
good for you, just tell them to use FaceCash) We've integrated directly with a
few of the processing networks now to get around that. This will be a great
tool for getting people on board with FaceCash, but you'll have to keep
support/dev in mind or you'll be dragged away from it.

When I did a Show HN a year back, connectivity was one of the big question
marks from everyone. I can report back that you'd be surprised how much of a
non-issue it really is. MiFi cards and wireless hotspots are an almost
bulletproof backup, it might be a bit slower but the store is open for
business. With traditional POS, card processing is down when their connection
is down so they're just as bad off as a web-based pos.

Point-of-sale software is well suited for SaaS, despite what many think, so
I'm not surprised to see another join the club. Aaron: If you plan on sticking
to restaurants/QSR shoot me an e-mail, have an idea I'd like to run past you.

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stanmancan
I spent 2 years in the POS industry (about 3-4 years ago since I left). I've
thought about this a couple times, but it keeps coming down to the same thing;
if your internet goes out, you're hooped.

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markkanof
Maybe use HTML 5 local storage if an internet connection isn't available, then
sync up with the server when it is?

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lurchpop
yeah. But I imagine there might be some stickiness with multiple terminals...I
guess if each terminal has it's own queue of order to be sent it wouldn't be a
problem. There def would be issues with credit card processing though.

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stanmancan
Credit card processing isn't the only problem. That goes down with the
internet right now too. The problem is communication between the terminals,
kitchen, bar, ect.

The way POS systems work is if you ring food and drinks in a terminal, the
drinks get sent to the bar, and the food gets sent to the kitchen. If your
using a web based point of sale system and your internet connection dies, none
of this can happen. All the sudden you're running the orders around the
restaurant by hand (which would _never_ fly).

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conductr
cool app. From a conversion perspective, might want to try and show the
product a bit more on the landing. Too much text for my taste. $0.02

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ccarpenterg
Very interesting. Do you have a demo?

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thinkcomp
This is kiosk mode, so it's designed to let merchants place a kiosk in-store
in order to decrease lines. It's a restricted version of the full application.
You'll have to sign up your business to use the real thing.

<https://www.facecash.com/kiosk.html?id=3587>

~~~
reledi
I believe I found a few bugs with the kiosk mode:

1\. Items are not grouped together when the same item is added at a later time
(or is this a feature?)

2\. Updating an order changes the price but not the quantity.

3\. When selecting the quantity of an item, there is no visual feedback to let
you know what number you have clicked on. It's also not obvious that +10 means
11.

4\. Orders that have more than 1 item do not contain bullet points.

See <http://i.imgur.com/Onpkb.png> for some examples. This was within 10-20
seconds of playing with it, there are probably many more.

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thinkcomp
Item 1 is a feature; you might want one taco with rice and one without.

We'll look at the others. Thanks!

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mgkimsal
Intelligent display grouping - if the second one added has the same
instructions or modifications, group them (but keep them separate in whatever
storage area you're using) would be a happy medium, although obviously more
work.

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yuvadam
Web hosted POS? What about a fallback when the WAN goes down?

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tomlin
In all honesty, this is probably fairly rare. I'd imagine about as rare as a
cooking oven burning out, running out of a specific ingredient, or having your
head cook call in sick. Making the system more reliable never hurts, though. A
"rocket stick" or tethered phone could tag in when ever there may be issue.

Many things can occur in a restaurant that can cause hiccups, but overall I
think the benefits outweigh the cons. A great idea.

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hatfork
see also: <http://www.vendhq.com/>

~~~
morganpyne
Yup, really impressed by this local (to me) kiwi company. They have solved the
connectivity issue with complete offline functionality via HTML 5 storage and
syncing; they also do integration with cash tills, barcode scanners, payment
systems, accounting systems etc. Disclaimer: I know the founder; he's a pretty
smart guy.

Nice to see more competition in this space as it certainly validates that the
area as a whole is ripe for revolution. I suspect that the incumbent POS folks
will be going the way of the dinosaur in a few years.

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kevinburke
How do you accept credit cards?

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thinkcomp
Either through the merchant's Authorize.Net account or through manual entry of
what was processed on an external swipe machine.

The point is to get everyone to take FaceCash, of course!

~~~
HNer
what do you mean manual entry? does someone have to manaually type in numbers?

Also do you have to already have an existing merchant account or can you
provide merchant gateways too?

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paul9290
Cool idea and wonder those who use the web based system would their personal
URL be something like facecash.com/mcdonalds ?

Overall its web based and my online bank account has been hacked into, thus I
never do online banking through the web anymore only through bank's official
iPhone app. If the banks can not keep us secure how do you plan on securing
payment information entered into your system?

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thinkcomp
All the usual ways. We encrypt bank and credit card data, hash passwords, etc.
Nothing is 100% secure but you can try your best.

The fact that we use your facial image to effectively authenticate you at the
point of sale, which is the whole reason for building this POS system in the
first place, makes the system a good deal more secure than anything else out
there for retail transactions.

~~~
HNer
Are you PCI compliant? If not I can help.

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jordo37
I loved looking at the demo you linked to below
(<https://www.facecash.com/kiosk.html?id=3587>). Any way we can get that front
and center on the page? I would assume any POS target customers want to get
their hands on it. Is your target more skewed towards big box or independent
retailers?

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retube
How do you interface with a barcode scanner or credit card terminal?

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VMG
AFAIK barcode scanners use the keyboard interface, meaning scanning a code
just sends some keystrokes to the PC.

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chopsueyar
Sometimes referred to as a "wedge" for a PS/2 keyboard port. USB models can
"emulate" a keyboard.

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lancewiggs
I'm not seeing a cash register - I'm seeing a personal payments system. For an
online cash register check out <http://vendhq.com/>

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lancewiggs
Whoops - now I'm seeing it - it the landing page. Is there anything actually
behind there?

<https://www.facecash.com/register.html>

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thinkcomp
Yes, quite a bit, actually!

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MichaelApproved
From what I see, everything is free. How do you make money?

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thinkcomp
FaceCash is a mobile payment system that more or less just happens to have a
cash register. We take 1.5% of each FaceCash transaction on the merchant side,
plus fees (also on the merchant side) for coupons that are delivered to the
FaceCash app and then result in a sale. We'll also start charging for some
parts of ThinkLink (the built-in accounting suite) like payroll, eventually.

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speckle
(tiny critique: "Advanced features" was a bit too long to glance over for me.
Might I suggest limiting it to 7+-2 bullets?)

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rplacd
That sounds wonderful, actually - a nice way to combat the "fire and forget"
mentality there that I've encountered.

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srik
Hope you allow regular receipts too. Email receipts might be harder to
convince?

~~~
thinkcomp
<http://www.killplasticbeforeitkillsyou.com>

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bkaid
If this grows in popularity I imagine they would have to change the name due
to Facebook's pending trademark on "Face*".

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thinkcomp
Not gonna happen. FaceCash is ours.

[http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...](http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77738529)

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bkaid
Doesn't mean Facebook wouldn't try.

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thinkcomp
They won't.

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MJR
Does this have anything to do with your certainty?
<http://www.allfacebook.com/aaron-greenspan-facebook-2009-05>

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jijoy
Interesting . But why you guys don't have a demo upfront ?

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newchimedes
Definitely an interesting concept, have you talked with any merchants? Curious
to see how easy/hard it is to convince to use a new tool...

~~~
thinkcomp
Yes. There's always a chicken-and-egg problem when building a new payment
network, but we've got a few on board and we're talking with many others.

<http://www.facecash.com/where.html>

