POS stands for point of sale. In UK usage it means the till: the screen, the software behind it and usually the card terminal attached to it. It is the same thing British suppliers have long called EPOS, electronic point of sale. A card machine on its own is not a POS system, which matters because the two are priced completely differently.
POS, EPOS and card machine are three different purchases
A card machine takes payments and nothing else, and is priced on a transaction rate. A POS or EPOS system runs the sale: products, prices, staff, stock, reporting, and is priced on a monthly software fee per till. Many suppliers sell both together, which is convenient and makes the card rate part of the software negotiation rather than a separate one.
What a POS system costs in the UK
Published tiers run from free to roughly 200 pounds a month per site. storekit prints a free tier, 99 pounds a month for growing brands and 199 pounds for its multichannel package. Loyverse gives the core away and prices sales history and employee management separately per store or per employee. Enterprise suppliers such as Cybertill publish nothing at all and route to a demo.
Where a small operator should start
A single site coffee shop taking cards and cash needs a till that can hold a menu, split a bill and report the day. That is the free or entry tier at most suppliers. The step up is worth paying for when stock control, several registers or multi site reporting start costing you time, and not before. Buying the tier you will need in two years is how small operators end up paying for features nobody uses.
Questions people ask about what is pos
What does POS mean?
Point of sale. In practice UK suppliers use it to mean the till system: the software, the screen and often the card terminal wired to it. On an invoice it may also refer to the physical hardware alone.
Is POS the same as EPOS?
For a buyer, yes. EPOS is the older British term, POS the international one, and suppliers use both on different pages of the same site. Nothing about the product or the price changes with the word.
Is a cheap POS system a false economy?
Not automatically. A free or low cost tier is genuinely enough for a single till operation. It becomes a false economy when the add-ons you actually need are priced separately, so total the add-ons before comparing tiers across suppliers.