VeriFone Systems Inc. announced it's launching a new site for its SAIL mobile POS system that caters to app developers. The SAIL Developer Portal gives application developers access to tools and APIs that let them integrate the SAIL mobile payment platform, VeriFone said.

SAIL is VeriFone's entry into the crowded mobile point-of-sale market. It lets businesses turn mobile devices into portable terminals, processing credit and debit transactions while in the field.

The big difference between SAIL and other mobile POS products, notably Square, is that VeriFone built SAIL on an open platform. This lets mobile application developers and technology providers build their own solutions using VeriFone's secure infrastructure in the background.

"SAIL is far more than a mobile payments app," said Brian Hamilton, VeriFone vice president of SMB commerce. "VeriFone's open platform APIs provide independent developers and partners the ability to easily integrate underwriting, payments and settlement into their mobile products and services, often within a matter of days or weeks."

A tool for every job

Developers can use the available toolkit to develop iOS and Android mobile payments solutions, and then embed the SAIL Payments API into their applications and utilize the SAIL platform to handle card processor and merchant settlement functions, VeriFone said.

Tools available through the platform allow developers to add more functionality beyond payments into their apps, as well. The Instant Commerce Toolkit gives developers "plug-and-play" access to various components of the SAIL open payment platform, allowing for real-time merchant enrollment and inventory and data sync capabilities.

As a part of its announcement of the new developer site, VeriFone provided some examples of companies that already use SAIL's technology as a part of their offerings. Along with Stitch Labs, which announced last week that it is integrating SAIL into its suite of online small business tools, PushPoint, a mobile marketing company, is using SAIL in its geo-targeted services that send merchant offers to local mobile devices users, VeriFone said.

"SAIL enhances our mobile marketing tools and enables our clients to easily optimize the relationship between marketing data and purchase data," said PushPoint CEO Greg McAllister in the announcement. "The VeriFone platform is open, flexible, and allows us to fit their payments services into the way we run our business."

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