The new ADVANTECH-AURES KRYSTAL UTK-8600 Series kiosk is everything you’d expect from a modern POS endpoint. Sleek and elegant in appearance, its slim vertical design gives it a minimal footprint. Versatile installation options (standalone, wall-mounted or tabletop) and a modular build make it a genuine all-rounder suitable for any retail, hospitality or leisure environment.
Talking about the UTK-8600’s component parts, they are again mostly what you would expect. It comes with a 15” full HD PCAP touchscreen. To this you can add a receipt printer and a 1D or 2D barcode scanner.
Things take an unexpected turn with payment peripherals. You can still, if you choose, pair the UTK-8600 with a choice of external card reader terminals connected via USB or Bluetooth.
But you don’t have to. The UTK-8600 can process payments without having to add an external device, directly through its screen.
The SoftPOS revolution reaches kiosks
The KRYSTAL UTK-8600 is our first kiosk to have built-in SoftPOS support. SoftPOS, or ‘software POS’, has been around for years, mostly as a concept for smartphones. It’s not to be confused with ‘POS software’, or the platforms and apps that every POS device needs to operate.
SoftPOS turns a general-purpose device like a smartphone into a payment console. It has proven to be a big hit with mobile traders – think food vans, stall operators, pop-up retailers – because it means they don’t have to bother with portable card readers and their notoriously unreliable connectivity. Instead, a SoftPOS app uses a smartphone’s in-built NFC reader to take contactless payments.
Mobility and convenience on the move are the obvious benefits of SoftPOS. So why have we decided to introduce the concept into our kiosk range, and why now?
The main benefit is that it removes a hardware component. Whether hardwired into the kiosk or attached as a peripheral, each separate piece of hardware represents an extra cost and an extra point of vulnerability in the system. Card readers must be bought, maintained and updated. They’re more expensive to run than most other types of peripherals because you must pay PCI compliance fees. Terminals reach end-of-life much faster because of the strict regulatory requirements around payments.
With SoftPOS, you use existing hardware in the kiosk unit. While SoftPOS providers do charge monthly fees, they tend to be lower than what payment terminal providers charge, taking advantage of the easy scalability and low overheads that SaaS offers. All updates and PCI compliance are included in the service subscription. And, as we touched on with notoriously unreliable mobile card reader network connections, there’s no risk of a signal drop out or a component failure stopping payments in their tracks.
Android opens the door to Tap-to-Pay
So why launch a SoftPOS-ready kiosk now? The KRYSTAL UTK-8600 is the latest in a series of Android kiosks and POS terminals we’ve recently introduced. Best known as a smartphone operating system, Android brings several benefits to POS. Its open-source architecture, for example, makes it easy and cheap for developers to build POS software and get it to market quickly. For businesses, that means a great choice of apps that are equally easy and cheap to buy, install and run.
These were all key factors in SoftPOS apps gaining traction on Android smartphones. But there’s more to it than easy market access for SoftPOS app developers. Android supports native on-device payment processing in key ways. One, Android gives developers direct access to built-in NFC chips, so they can easily build tap-to-pay UI. Two, Android has ready-made security protocols that help meet strict PCI DSS compliance, like creating an isolated Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) on the device processor which ensures payment details are never available to other apps on the device.
The KRYSTAL UTK-8600 integrates ADVANTECH’s USC-115RC POS hardware. Optimized for Android 14, USC-115RC incorporates tap-to-pay technology as standard and is designed to deliver enterprise-level device management, including whole fleet security updates. Compatible with all Android SoftPOS platforms, the UTK-8600 makes it easier than ever to accept payments via a kiosk, securely and reliably.
Get in touch with the ADVANTECH-AURES team to find out more.