POS machine

If you were born before the 80s, when the first card machines made their debut, chances are, you refer to them as a POS machine.

Today, the term refers to a card machine – a device that facilitates payments and in turn, keeps the wheels of enterprise turning.

Today’s POS machines aka card machines are a far cry from their analogue predecessors.

Originally known as a credit card imprinter, POS machines of old were bulky, manually operated machines that worked by imprinting or copying the number and name on a cardboard credit card.

The merchant would then sign the form and send it off to the bank to be cashed. Imagine!

A magnetic invention of note paves the way for modern POS machines.

Two decades later, IBM released the game-changing magnetic strip - that little black line on the back of your credit or debit card that contains information like your name, card number, expiry date and card authorisation code.

In order to process or ‘read’ this information, the first electronic POS machines were introduced. A merchant would swipe a card on the side of the machine in order to read the information. Thus, the term ‘swipe machine’ was born.

A Frenchman and his ingenious smart card make waves.

It was a couple of years later that a French inventor, named Roland Moreno, created the smart card, which made use of a “tiny...computer microprocessor” that is now embedded in all manner of things, including bank cards, SIM cards, passports and other forms of ID.

Banks soon followed suit, rolling out credit cards that contained microchips, which in turn, facilitated the birth of the POS systems or card machines that are still in use today.