Liven takes the fight to Square with launch of new Android POS solution for the Aussie market

Australian hospitality tech platform Liven is aggressively recruiting restaurants and cafes affected by the recent Square outage, promising free migration and zero-fee options to businesses that swap to its new Android point-of-sale (POS) system.

Melbourne-based Liven introduced its new Android POS system on Friday, claiming the development will impose fewer fees and charges compared to other popular POS systems on the market.

It is based on the iOS POS system developed by local startup Abacus, which Liven acquired earlier this year.

Liven claims Abacus Android POS will allow businesses to access cheaper hardware than iOS-specific options, and can connect to existing hardware like cash drawers and receipt printers.

Businesses using the broader Liven Payments system can access hardware and software contracts without fees, with more advanced backend configurations climbing to $49 a month.

Shahrooz Chowdhury, Liven founder and co-CEO, said the system’s Australian origins spoke to its commitment to domestic businesses.

“Abacus Android POS was purpose-built here in Australia for Australian hospitality and grocery,” he said.

“It’s a first-of-its-kind solution that delivers a world-class customer experience at a fraction of the cost of alternatives.

“Unlike offshore vendors, we’re 100% committed to the Australian market.”

In a pointed jab at Square, the payments tech giant that endured a day of global disruptions in September, Liven has pledged zero-fee migration, no subscription fees, and zero-commission options to venues that flip to Abacus Android POS.

In doing so, Liven has joined rival Zeller in using the Square outage as an opportunity to drum up new business.

For its part, Square said the hours-long outage was caused by an internal DNS error.

The company said it has introduced a new DNS firewall and internal processes to avoid a similar outage taking place again.

Square’s own outage monitoring site shows the platform has responded to multiple technical issues since then but has avoided widespread and long-lasting outages like those experienced early last month.

Separate to Liven’s new Android solution, Westpac also revealed its in-house Android POS system on Friday.

The Presto app, developed alongside Australian “payments as a service” startup mx51, promises easy connections between Westpac EFTPOS terminals and more than 100 hospitality and retail POS systems.

Strengthening the link between EFTPOS terminals and those back-end systems can streamline the end-of-day reconciliation process, said Mandy Rutherford, Westpac’s managing director of cash and transactional banking.

It will also “reduce the chance of keying errors and speed up the checkout process, which can be a great time saver, particularly during rush hour,” Rutherford added.