5 Best Convenience Store POS Systems

• POS Nation has a “build and price” page that you can use to get an idea of how much you may pay per month for POS hardware and software.The company also advertises the following prebuilt packages:
  • Flex Monthly: $149/terminal/month (pay monthly for your hardware and software)
  • Freedom: $999/terminal (one-time hardware fee) plus monthly software fee

POS Nation is heavily focused on allowing store owners to sell and manage all types of convenience items, including:

• Regulated Item Sales: Sell alcohol, tobacco, vapes, and other regulated items with an integrated ID scanner and cashier prompt for customer ID. Perform case breaks, vape kitting, and collect inventory data for tobacco rebate programs.
• EBT Sales: Automatically flag EBT items at checkout and allow customers to pay for EBT-eligible and non-eligible items in one transaction. Create special tax settings for EBT sales.
• Lottery Sales: Sell and redeem lottery tickets at your POS register. Perform lottery sales and payout reports.
• Hot Food Sales: Sell hot food at the register with your retail and fuel items or at a self-checkout register. Monitor perishable and nonperishable inventory to reduce food wastage.

POS Nation has great loss prevention features, which are excellent for convenience stores with high employee turnover, theft on the floor, or high levels of damaged products. This includes cash drawer security features, such as blind and forced till counts, employee damage and loss reports, and granular employee permissions. Plus, you can integrate security cameras with your POS, record transactions, and use that footage to determine instances of theft.

POS Nation security settings on admin dashboard.

You can also set automatic purchase ordering for items based on custom low stock levels, an advanced feature not many POS providers include in their core feature set. You can analyze stock movement periodically to perfect your reordering levels. This is an excellent feature to help convenience store owners with a diverse stock set keep their shelves stocked without overflow.

Plus, POS Nation is a locally installed software, which means that you can take sales without any WiFi connection. This is great for businesses that regularly experience outages or poor internet connectivity.

POS Nation register, card reader, receipt printer, barcode scanner, and customer-facing order display pole.

If you’re paying monthly, the cost of the hardware is included in the monthly fee. If you pay a one-time fee, you own the hardware forever.

Upon signup, you will receive a convenience store POS bundle, which includes a touch PC, receipt printer, scanner, cash drawer, and chip card reader.

Additional POS bundles cost $999. You can also purchase other hardware, such as scanners, separately.

You will need to purchase a fuel site controller from another hardware vendor, such as Verifone if you intend to sell fuel at your convenience store.

POS Nation offers its own in-house payment processing system via its merchant services program. The company has partnered with payment processors such as Mercury Payment Systems, Worldpay, Heartland, and Sterling Payment Technologies to meet your payment processing needs.

POS Nation advertises a payment processing fee between 2% and 2.5%, depending on transaction volumes. You have to contact a representative to get a quote.

There are no returns or refunds on one-time POS hardware/software purchases. Payment in full is due at the time of purchase.

There are no early termination fees and no refunds on monthly subscriptions. You may cancel your monthly plan at any time with a 30-day notice.

Translation: Try the software for a month before committing to a lifetime purchase.

On all Square For Retail plans, you can have an unlimited number of POS devices per location. If you do open more than one location, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan.

To accept EBT payment types (SNAP and WIC), you’ll have to integrate Square with Totilpay, a payment processing solution that costs between $19.95/month and $49.95/month.

Square For Retail offers a free online store builder so convenience store owners can offer order-ahead for in-store pickup and/or local delivery. An employee can deliver items, or you can use Square’s fleet of on-demand drivers for $1.50 per delivery transaction if you don’t have that kind of manpower. Even if you don’t plan on selling anything online, it’s nice for businesses to have an online presence.

In terms of in-store sales, Square offers the following best features:

• EBT sales capabilities via third-party app
• CBD program with reasonable payment processing fees
• ID verification (but no automated sale denial for under-21s)
• Weighted item sales with an integrated scale
• Time-sensitive discounts and coupons

Depending on your plan, you get inventory management capabilities such as automated purchase ordering, low-stock alerts, vendor management, and barcode label printing. You can create your own inventory tracking system to make up for the fact that Square does not offer perishable inventory tracking like providers such as POS Nation and IT Retail.

We also like that you can incorporate marketing features such as a customer loyalty program, timed coupons and discounts, gift cards, and mix-and-match deals.

Square POS on iPad, Square Register, and Square contactless card reader.

To take payments, you’ll need at least the $49 Square Contactless + Chip Reader. However, most convenience stores will want to purchase the $1,269 Square Register kit, which includes a cash drawer, receipt printer, and the proprietary Square Register (interest-free payment plans are available.)

You should also purchase a Square-compatible barcode scanner, which will cost between $100 and $200 if you buy it new.

Before you buy equipment from Square or a third-party seller, read our guide to Square POS hardware.

On the free POS plan, Square charges a payment processing fee of 2.6% plus $0.10 per card-present transaction. That processing fee was reduced to 2.5% plus $0.10 on the Plus plan.

If you accept online payments, you’ll be charged a per-transaction fee of 2.9% plus $0.30, no matter which plan you’re on.

Square charges merchants on paid plans monthly. It’s free and easy to cancel if you decide to switch from Square to another POS provider.

Square also has a limited-time hardware warranty, during which Square will send you new equipment in exchange for damaged hardware, even if you didn’t purchase directly from Square. You must file a warranty claim and send the old pieces back to Square within 14 days of receiving your new hardware, or your account will be charged.

The pricing above is for Clover software plans, which are monthly recurring fees you pay for a subscription that accompanies Clover hardware.

You can purchase Clover hardware from a third-party seller, and you’ll pay for a software plan, or you can pay Clover directly for your POS hardware.

Clover’s retail offering is pretty straightforward, including your basic scanning as well as in-store discounts and promotions, physical and eGift cards, and an offline payments mode so you can still check out customers even if your store’s Wi-Fi stops working.

Clover also offers a built-in loyalty points program, which is a huge advantage over other POS systems.

Whatever advanced or specialized features you want will come in the form of a Clover app. There are 450+ apps available in Clover’s app store that give your convenience store POS these best features:

• EBT transaction functionality
• Age verification, including automated sale denial with invalid ID/date of birth
• Lottery sales reporting app (paid add-on)
• Tobacco discount program (paid add-on)
• Self-service kiosks
• Kitchen menu/order management
• Schedule and shift management

Clover is also special because you can get a merchant account with one of several Clover hardware/software resellers, meaning that you can find great payment processing fees and contract terms (so long as you get your Clover setup from a good Clover reseller).

Clover countertop POS system, handheld POS system, barcode scanner, cash drawer, and card reader.

You can buy POS hardware from Clover or several Clover resellers. Devices sold through Clover range from the $49 Clover Go card reader to the $1,799 Clover Station Duo.

If you purchase a device directly from Clover, you can only use Clover’s merchant services, which include payment processing by Fiserv. You can expect to pay a processing fee of 2.3% or 2.6%, plus a $0.10 flat fee per transaction, depending on your Clover software plan.

When you purchase Clover hardware from a reseller, you are subject to that reseller’s payment processing fees. For high-volume sellers, an alternative Clover hardware provider could offer better rates.

Clover offers 36-month and 48-month contracts with early termination fees should you cancel your contract early. There’s also nothing you can do with your Clover hardware if you stop using Clover POS software since Clover hardware is proprietary. The company won’t fix hardware that you obtain from any source other than Clover.com.

If you work with a Clover reseller, you are subject to that reseller’s terms, so do your research before committing. Read your contract and other customer reviews of your potential merchant service provider to avoid Clover scams.

The bottom line is that no matter where you get your Clover hardware, buying expensive proprietary hardware is a big commitment. So, make sure Clover is right for you before shelling out the money for the fancy POS hardware.

Verifone POS software pricing is quote-based. You will need to contact a Verifone representative, tell them about your business size, and they will give you an estimate.

Verifone is a highly popular retail business hardware provider, offering a variety of card readers, POS registers, self-serve kiosks, and fuel site controllers that integrate well and are easy to use.

Verifone’s card readers are easy to retrofit onto existing fuel pumps and allow you to sell lottery tickets to customers at the pump. Verifone’s fuel controller can handle up to 64 pumps at once, plus the fuel tank monitoring integrations Verifone offers make monitoring your pumps easy and accurate.

Verifone’s POS system expertly handles all item types, including regulated items and fuel sales. Customers may be required to scan or manually enter their ID when purchasing regulated items, such as alcohol or vapes, and can be restricted from purchasing regulated items at self-serve kiosks.

Employees can easily see when customers are at the pump, monitor for drive-offs, accept prepayments at the register, perform fuel reservations and reversals, and more.

Verifone’s self-ordering hot food kiosks, which integrate into a kitchen display system, help divert customers away from the retail checkout line and speed up checkout for everyone. Kiosks can be branded, and you can frequently make use of upselling opportunities. You also have the option to build a drive-through into your rest stop if your space is large enough and there’s enough made-to-order food demand.

Verifone self-serve food ordering kiosk at a rest stop.

Additionally, Verifone integrates with several third-party software providers. You can put up digital signage around your rest stop advertising your menus, meal deals, loyalty offers, and more. There are fleet card acceptance programs, car wash hardware, loyalty programs, and money order integrations, so your rest stop can offer just about every service imaginable.

Verifone contactless card reader retrofits onto the fuel pump.

Verifone does not list hardware pricing on its website, so you’ll need to get a quote for this as well. The company offers registers, fuel site controllers, self-serve food order kiosks, and credit card terminals. You can also integrate a tap-to-pay card reader to take contactless payment types such as Apple Pay and Google Pay directly into your fuel pumps.

Verifone does have some of the best credit card terminals, priced from $150 to $500, depending on the model. Verifone hardware is universal, so you can use it with almost any POS software you like.

Verifone has several POS systems, along with payment devices and fuel site controllers. While you must contact Verifone for an estimate, a quick Google search for Verifone systems lists credit card terminals anywhere from $150 to $500. Full-scale POS systems with fuel site controllers are priced at thousands of dollars.

Verifone partners with First Data, Heartland, National Bankcard Services, and Worldpay to meet your convenience store POS system payment processing needs.

If you choose to purchase a Verifone POS or credit card terminal from a third-party seller, Verifone is not responsible for repairing or replacing any damaged devices.

If you purchased a device from an authorized Verifone seller, it is covered under a warranty for either 13 months or 36 months, depending on the device.

The Core plan will work for very small stores, but we do recommend at least the Advanced plan for most stores that want excellent inventory management features.

Since KORONA pricing is per terminal, we recommend that you consider how many terminals you really need in your stores before you sign on with KORONA. You can always add more terminals later.

If you pay annually, you get one month free.

KORONA offers the majority of convenience store sales features you need, including EBT sales, ID verification, age restrictions on items, lottery ticket scanning, food sales, and alcohol sales.

However, KORONA’s most unique POS features are its loss prevention features, affordable inventory management, and franchise capabilities.

You’ll get these loss prevention features with KORONA:

• Forced drawer closing, blind till counts, and restricting cash drawer access to open only when they make a sale
• Require manager approval for item voids, price changes, item returns, and inventory changes
• Run cash drawer reports at any time, at the end of shifts, and set maximum allowed balance differences
• Cashier balance and time tracking reports
• Restrict which cashiers can grant permissions to other cashiers (used for managers who need to be able to use registers but will also need to create new cashiers and associated cashier permissions)

KORONA POS edit cashier permissions on admin dashboard.

• Set reordering levels with preferred vendor/warehouse reordering sources
• Pack to single item conversion (great for selling items like cigarettes and liquor bottles)
• Product performance reports, including slow sellers, product movement, and reorder optimization level recommendations
• Stock difference lists and product discrepancy reports
• Inventory app so you can send purchase orders, receive items, and scan barcodes from your phone (Plus plan and higher only)

KORONA POS edit product information in the admin dashboard.

Franchise owners will appreciate the ability to create portals for franchisees with restricted user permissions. You’ll also get franchise revenue reports and a royalty collection setup.

KORONA POS barcode scanner, admin dashboard on tablet, POS register, and external card reader.

KORONA hardware integrates with most POS hardware. If you’re not sure what to pick, look into our best credit card machines and terminals.

TSYS, First Data, Heartland, Cayan, Clearant, Elavon, EVO, Merchant Warehouse, Merchant Payment Systems, Global Payments, Cost Plus Processing, and Eagle Processing can all be used to process payments on transactions made through KORONA POS.

KORONA POS offers a free trial, which you may use for as long as you like before buying. However, the free trial does have limitations.

You may cancel a monthly KORONA account at any time.