EXCLUSIVE — Online receivables provider Autobooks is currently developing a prototype for the point-of-sale.
Businesses will be able to use this in addition to the payment and treasury service solutions the company currently provides, Jake L’Ecuyer, head of strategic initiatives for Autobooks, told Bank Innovation.
This system will nicely augment the integrated receivables platform Autobooks currently offers, a major draw of which is its simplicity, according to L’Ecuyer.
“[The platform] can show businesses their account balance, they can jump to spending invoices, pay bills — it’s everything in one place,” said L’Ecuyer. “We currently don’t offer a POS, but we do have a prototype we are working on right now.”
Autobooks declined to state when the prototype will be ready for launch.
The fintech seeks to enable integrated accounting and payments services for small businesses. With that tailored focus on SMBs, the Detroit-based fintech (which was founded in 2015, and received a slot in Bank Innovation’s 2016 DEMOvation Challenges) is competing with names like PayPal and Square offering similar financial services.
A POS system would level the playing field somewhat for the younger startup, especially as Square is narrowing its focus on small businesses with the launch of its new physical store to bring in more potential sellers on its network.
The company was launched by the three co-founders of payment and accounting solutions company Billhighway (created in 1999), which was bought by credit card processor BluePay in February 2016.
Autobooks currently uses BluePay’s services to process payments on its platform. Rather than working to replace incumbents, the fintech “acts as a partner” to financial institutions in order to create a more connected financial ecosystem, according to L’Ecuyer.
Aside from its single-sign-in platform, Autobooks also offers lower transaction rates for businesses, offering about a 1.99% transaction fee compared to PayPal’s 2.99% rate, according to L’Ecuyer.
“We’re seeing right now that a lot of [businesses] are getting strangled on fees,” said L’Ecuyer. “It’s hard for some of the micro-businesses to shoulder that when their margins are so small because they are just getting started.”