Many retail industry players are currently considering the idea of supporting payment terminals and searching for optimal payment terminal solutions. The idea of payment terminal solution implementation becomes even more relevant, because of EMV standards are to be imposed upon US businesses pretty soon. In order to support EMV, a payment gateway or a PSP needs to integrate with the respective payment terminal solution.
One of the options for a payment gateway or a payment service provider is to use the payment terminal solution, which the acquirer has to offer. However, such a solution is, usually, tied to acquirer’s payment processing platform, and, consequently, it cannot be used by third party payment gateways.
Another solution is integration with a payment terminal, either using an existing terminal application (and integrating with it through an integration software development kit), or implementing an embedded application into the overall payment ecosystem. Each of these two options has its disadvantages. For instance, an embedded application is difficult to customize, while an embedded solution requires more considerable development resources, efforts and funds (particularly, due to costly certifications with the acquirer).
More information on payment terminal solutions can be found in the respective article on Paylosophy.com.