The payments industry's maturation from static point-of-sale terminals is giving merchants a greater ability to diversify how they use space and engage with customers. 

While firms like Block have long offered hardware attachments to phones to accept credit cards, new options allow the phones to act as point-of-sale devices without an attachment. Called tap to pay or softPOS, this technology minimizes the work required for merchants and, along with other innovations such as checkout-free store design, can push in-store terminals deeper into the past.

 "SoftPOS is the next step in the evolution of payment acceptance in the physical world," said Thad Peterson, a strategic advisor at Aite-Novarica. "With no hardware cost, full portability and no need for an extensive POS back end, SoftPOS is ideal for micro merchants who have previously had to use a dongle to enable card payments."