Service businesses that rely on point of sale (POS) can use all the help they can get to keep transactions streamlined.On Thursday (April 24), Square announced the release of the next-generation Square Point of Sale app that consolidates several of its industry-specific tools into a single, customizable platform designed to meet the needs of businesses as they change.The press release said the new app integrates functionalities previously available through separate products — such as Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail, Square Appointments, and Square Invoices — into one unified system.According to the company, this approach is particularly helpful for sellers that operate across multiple business models, such as breweries expanding into restaurants or spas offering subscription services.A PYMNTS How People Pay report said that certain health and beauty products are actually driving shoppers back to brick-and-mortar stores.The updated Square Point of Sale app introduces “modes,” which are tailored feature sets for different industries. For food and beverage businesses, there are distinct modes for quick service, full service and bars, each with specialized tools like menu management, check handling and tab management.Speaking of restaurants that use Square, PYMNTS recently reported that Square’s food and beverage merchants can offer in-store rewards experiences at checkout with the help of a partnership with Thanx.“For Square, the integration expands its platform’s ability to support larger, multi-unit food and beverage businesses,” PYMNTS wrote.Additional modes in the new Square Point of Sale support retail operations, as well as bookings, services and a standard mode for general use.Willem Ave, the head of product for Square, commented in a statement, “We’re also able to build innovative new features for sellers of all types and sizes even faster, with less overhead than required for maintaining many separate tools. We can deliver specialized software experiences for unique use cases and complex industries, while maintaining the ease-of-use sellers, their employees, and their customers.”Square reported that during initial testing, sellers using the consolidated app engaged with features at a rate nearly 80% higher than those on the previous POS platform. The company plans to introduce further enhancements and new modes in an upcoming release scheduled for May 13

Restaurants using Square can now offer rewards experiences in-store with the help of Thanx. This capability follows the integration of Thanx’s loyalty and guest engagement platform with Square’s point-of-sale (POS) system, the companies said in a Thursday (March 27) press release emailed to PYMNTS. “Together, we set out to build not just another POS-loyalty integration, but an enterprise-grade guest experience that seamlessly captures rich customer data and delivers at-POS personalization to increase visit frequency without adding operational complexity,” Thanx CEO Zach Goldstein said in the release