Why This Google Wallet And PayPal Vet Thinks His New Product Will Be A 'No Brainer' For Businesses

Osama Bedier is a payments veteran.

He worked at PayPal for eight years before joining Google as its VP of Google Wallet in 2011.

He left last year because he had spent the last half decade thinking about "how commerce infrastructure is broken."

Today, he's releasing a product that he thinks will help give in-store payments an update.

Poynt is a smart terminal for small to medium-sized businesses that Bedier says takes Square's white dongle card-reader to the next level:

Poynt is a wirelessly-connected, open-platform payments terminal that works with existing registers. The device has enough technology baked in to accept any kind of payment and, because it runs a forked version of Android, merchants will also be able to download apps from developers covering things like inventory management or data analysis.

Bedier says the time is perfect for his company's new payments option: By October 2015, all merchants will have to switch to payments terminals compatible with EMV cards (which use chip-based - instead of swipe - authentication).

Bedier describes Poynt as a "no-risk no-brainer" for merchants because it works with all payment types. Traditional swipe cards, NFC like Apple Pay or Google Wallet, Bluetooth, beacons, QR codes, or EMV chip and pin cards: No extra hardware required."It's future-proof," he told Business Insider.

The Poynt Smart Terminal is available for pre-order at $299 and will begin shipping to merchants in early 2015. The company has already partnered with two major banks, though Bedier declined to say which, that will sell the Poynt smart terminal directly to merchants.