This week, Groupon launches a point-of-sale service for restaurants across the country, reports Reuters. (A point-of-sale service, in essence, replaces a cash register.) The service, called Breadcrumb, had been tested in some 100 New York restaurants, bars, and cafes before the wider launch. The service runs on the iPad—it’s $99 per month to authorize one iPad, $199 for two, $299 for five, and $399 for up to ten. With Breadcrumb, Groupon begins to look less like a LivingSocial competitor (or vice versa) and more like a competitor to Square or even PayPal (see “The New Money”).
Indeed, this is part of a larger pivot Groupon has been undergoing, one that CEO Andrew Mason has told Bloomberg would make the Chicago-based company something of an “operating system for local commerce.” In late September, Groupon also launched a service called Groupon Payments, which allowed its business partners to process credit card payments for a lower fee than other providers. The goal of Groupon Payments is both to make money directly and to strengthen relationships with local merchants, Groupon’s Sean Harper told Reuters.
It’s a relationship that, at least anecdotally, could in some cases use shoring up. In my own reporting—and simply over the course of desultorily redeeming my own Groupons that I bought in the Groupon frenzy of late 2010—I’ve encountered a number of New York merchants who were unhappy with their Groupon experience. A New York entrepreneurial couple I once spoke with encountered so much daily deal frustration that they invented a whole startup designed to clean out people’s mailboxes of unwanted daily deal e-mail.
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