Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Where does the associate carry all that stuff? If it goes on a cart, your mobile-equipped associates get a lot less mobile. If you have to create bag-and-tag stations throughout the store, customers have to be dragged to the nearest available one, and efficiency goes out the window.

And you’ll still have to figure out how to send the list of goods the customer is buying to the kiosk or cash register. Then there’s deciding whether to modify your existing POS application for that approach, to add new hardware at the cash point that pretends to the POS software that it’s scanning all those products on the spot, or to rip out your POS software and replace it with something designed to support mobile POS—if you can find one that’s PCI-approved.

See the problem? The options are endless. The opportunity for creating complexity by starting with a mobile device and building out from there is dangerously tempting. And complexity kills IT projects. Simplicity—even if it’s just conceptual, 50,000-foot-level simplicity—is crucial.

Ironically, you really do have to pile up all those complications before you can clear away the clutter and get focused on how you can use mobile in-store. The laundry list of issues doesn’t have to be a liability—it can be liberating.

Are payments going to be too much of a thicket? Don’t accept them on the mobile devices. Stick to helping customers select products or scanning their purchases to prepare them for checkout. That way, in-store mobile stays out of PCI scope, and you can look Apple Store-slick without the mobile-payment pain.

Can your POS vendor sell you a front-end for your existing POS software, complete with wireless encryption tough enough to keep your QSA happy? Then you’ve got a practical way of doing at least some in-store mobile payments. Just don’t forget to stick a giant-size loss-prevention tag on the back of each mobile device or to set up each device so it automatically wipes itself as soon as it’s out of range of the store’s Wi-Fi signal.

Do you believe you can assemble the parts that can plug mobile devices cleanly and securely into your POS software so it won’t have to be modified? The more pain points you know about, the more easily you can dodge them—and the fewer pieces of the in-store mobile puzzle you plug in at a time, the better you’ll control that pain.

Or have you convinced yourself that you really can get rid of your cash wraps and replace them all with roving associates? Good luck with that. At least armed with a long list of in-store mobile’s issues, you know what you’re in for.