Published on the 01/04/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

The Commonwealth Bank is hitching its hopes for sales of tens of thousands of its tablet device to the 800 software developers it says have registered to use its Pi software platform…

The long-awaited launch of the Albert point of sale payments device yesterday provided the Commonwealth Bank with an opportunity to sketch its vision of the future of retail.

Instead of retailers being tethered to a fixed payments device, CBA expects tens of thousands of sales people in both Australia and New Zealand will eventually use the Albert Android tablet to conduct sales anywhere in store. It is also optimistic that individual businesses will commission or develop point of sale applications which integrate with other backend software to provide specific functions and push data to the point of sale, making the device far more powerful than a traditional cash register.

At the launch of the platform yesterday Dwayne Bonner, technical director of Mogas and Easy Fuel, described how the company was using Albert terminals to handle payments and its loyalty programme, but had also developed an internal application which ran on the Albert to streamline compliance, which linked into the corporate ERP platform.

Besides having real-time access to payments and loyalty information from the Albert device, it was also possible for the company to keep in touch with its truck drivers during their fortnight-long trips through rural and remote Australia.

Gary Roach, Commonwealth Bank’s managing director of payments and cash management services, said that this demonstrated how the Albert POS device was being deployed not just as a payments platform but a broader business tool.

That, however, still relies on businesses being prepared to develop or commission their own applications, as at the launch of the Albert device there were just eight Albert apps available for download from the bank’s appstore. Australian software businesses Kounta and Local Measure have signalled their interest in developing for the platform.

According to Jonathan Barouch, founder and CEO of Local Measure, “Albert would allow us to push real time data to the store manager. Think of credit card data overlaid with store data, time of day information and what they like.”

Albert, which has been developed in partnership with Wincor Nixdorf and Ideo was first announced by the bank in July 2012, but because of the need to achieve PCI compliance and fix niggling quality issues the device was only released generally yesterday. The starting fee for access to the system is $37.50 a month as part of a merchant plan.

The bank will make the system available in Australia and New Zealand, with Wincor Nixdorf being able to sell it in other international markets.