As Square and other ecommerce competitors amp up their online offerings for merchants, Shopify’s going in another direction and revamping its offline tools.
Starting today, merchants that want to branch out into a bricks-and-clicks model can buy a suite of new Shopify hardware tools: a tap and chip reader, dock and retail stand. Prices for the individual tools start at $39, and the whole kit costs $229. Other than paying for the hardware, Shopify merchants won’t see any extra charges to their plans.
“We have 820,000 merchants and when those merchants have tested out the market and see if it’s working online, they start thinking about offline,” said Craig Miller, chief product officer, Shopify. “They love that they can use the same solution online that they’ve been using for years to transition to do offline as well.”
It isn’t Shopify’s first foray into hardware for brick and mortar, but it’s …