Thomas Priore and Priority Offer Cloud-Based POS System With MX POS

Two impressive statistics show the importance of small businesses to the American economy: They employ 46% of the American workforce, and they account for 43% of the nation’s gross domestic product. However, about half of all small businesses close in less than five years. Given the importance of small businesses and the challenges they face, Thomas Priore believes innovative technology should focus on providing practical solutions to real-world small business problems.

Priore, chairman and CEO of Priority, says integrated point-of-sales systems can help achieve that goal by facilitating faster customer payment settlements and accelerating access to cash for small businesses. Nowhere is that needed more than in the restaurant and retail spaces where margins are razor-thin and cash flow is hard to predict.

Priority recently released MX POS, a cloud-based system that’s customizable to the needs of individual businesses and delivers the latest in analytics and reporting. While it can help any enterprise become more effective and efficient, it’s especially beneficial to smaller businesses such as restaurants and retailers.

“In today’s challenging economic climate, small to medium-sized businesses remain vital contributors to local economies, the jobs market, and the U.S. [gross domestic product],” said Priore in a release announcing the debut of MX POS. “Priority is focused on delivering a combination of payments and banking solutions that help SMBs succeed by accelerating cash flow and optimizing their performance.”

Thomas Priore Wants Tech To Have Practical Applications for Businesses

According to Priore, MX POS and advanced fintech payment and banking systems “won’t just offer competitive advantages to business owners, but may actually hold the key to long-term business success,” adding that technology only serves businesses if it offers straightforward ways to make improvements.

For example, cash flow is a frequent problem for restaurants and retailers. The MX POS system allows restaurants and retailers to settle transactions faster, helping them get quicker access to cash. They can then use that cash in ways that best benefit the business, including paying employees, suppliers, or making loan repayments.

“That’s how technology has to work. It has to actually enable those things that make the lives of business owners better,” Priore said in a video interview with PYMNTS. He explained that software companies benefit by asking themselves the following question about their products: “How does this influence a business?”

He added, “Not what you think or the theory behind it — we can all do the math — but is it practical, can it actually be employed to a high degree of utility? If the answer is ‘no,’ then you’ve failed in the architecture. Whatever the tech is, it needs to be simple, it needs to be agile so it’s not just for this business, but needs to scale across business types and be flexible.”

Why Cloud-Based POS Systems Are Popular

Restaurant and retailer store owners have many compelling reasons to opt for a cloud-based POS system over traditional, legacy POS systems. The adoption of cloud-based POS systems is “one of the smartest moves a business can make,” according to business.com.

A legacy system refers to a POS system that stores data on local servers and functions within closed networks. This means business owners and employees can only access the system on a local computer. Cloud-based services allow authorized personnel to access the system from anywhere and on any type of device, including mobile phones.

While a legacy POS system is structured based on daily transactions, a cloud-based POS system is designed to handle customer transactions throughout their entire relationship with a business. Cloud-based POS systems also allow for more efficient data analysis, cost savings in areas such as data security, better inventory management, and improved customer support.

Thomas Priore believes that a cloud-based POS gives small businesses another way to take advantage of efficiencies that help build a better bottom line. He also said it’s part of an overall transition for small and medium-sized businesses into using fintech technology that accelerates cash flow.

“Payments is not about just accepting credit card payments anymore,” Priore said. “The next point of convergence is around payment and banking features.  So, you can receive those point-of-sale payments and get them deposited quickly. We have technology at Priority that we’re rolling out where we will fund the same day as the payment authorization. Instant payment, instant settlement.

“Those decisions about how I want to spend my money and where I can utilize that improved cash flow that just hit my account more quickly gives small businesses flexibility.”

Thomas Priore and Priority Offer POS Systems for Both Restaurants and Retailers

With MX POS, Priority created systems designed to work with restaurants and retailers. 

The Priority MX POS system for restaurants, called MX Restaurant, features a kitchen display system, order tracking, pricing, menu and table management, and online ordering and delivery. The system is compatible with DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats. Priority created the system to work with a wide variety of food establishments, including fine dining restaurants, bars, food trucks, pizza restaurants, fast-casual spots, and dessert shops.

The Priority MX POS system for retailers, called MX Retail, offers integrated, retail-specific features that Priority can scale to size and tailor to meet specific demands of the organization’s market sector. It also features accounting integrations with Xero and QuickBooks. The system works with various types of retailers, including convenience and package stores, coffee shops and bakeries, as well as stores that sell clothing or groceries.

Joseph Harrington, the senior vice president of sales at Priority, said in the news release about MX POS that running all orders through the MX POS system will allow businesses to save time and money by allowing them to quickly complete e-commerce transactions and giving them access to both front-end and back-end operations support.

“Business owners today are faced with many challenges, but how, when, and where they accept and make customers’ payment transactions is oftentimes the biggest hurdle to business success,” Harrington said. “With MX POS, we used our industry insights and our vision of the future of payments to create a system that offers distinct features and benefits. We took what many merchants are used to and designed a fundamentally better system.”

Thomas Priore noted that tech-driven payments systems represent an area that can make the difference for small and medium-sized businesses. 

“We think that’s the future of all small businesses; it’s just a matter of which tools are being utilized,” Priore said. “Payments is now just not about receiving payments. It’s about money in and money out — and how that gets stored, for a moment, as it gets redirected to its best utility. That’s what modern payments and modern commerce is becoming.”