Before Retailers Commit to a POS System, Some Are Going to Bentonville First

There is a reason enterprise POS decisions carry the informal label “CIO Killers.” The systems connect every customer transaction to inventory, loyalty programs, and an expanding list of third-party ordering platforms, and once deployed they rarely get replaced quickly or cheaply. Eugene Park, chief strategy officer at Kitestring Technical Services, told IT Brief in January that a failed deployment is consequential enough to cost an executive their job.

Kitestring, a Bentonville-based consultancy founded by former Walmart technologists, opened a permanent vendor-neutral testing lab at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York in January. The standard POS evaluation process is optimized for vendors, not for buyers. Demos run on pre-tested hardware. Trade show walkthroughs move quickly and show products performing without friction. RFP responses produce documentation. None of it replicates what a retailer will actually encounter after committing to a multi-year, multimillion-dollar deployment across hundreds of store locations.

What the Lab Puts in Front of Retailers

The facility gives retailers a controlled environment to run competing systems against their own transaction data and store workflows. Lindsay Schwab, Kitestring’s head of partnerships and growth, told Payments Dive that the goal is for retailers to visit and compare, side by side, “all of the different point-of-sale systems that they’re interested in.” Sessions are available in person or remotely.

The lab currently includes software from NCR, Toshiba, GK Software, Diebold Nixdorf, and ECRS, along with integrated foodservice systems from two vendors. Hardware comes from Fujitsu, Elo, MicroTouch, HP, and SATO, with further expansion planned, according to IT Brief’s January coverage.

Kitestring earns revenue from consulting and implementation services, not from selling hardware or software. That structure allows the lab to host competing platforms simultaneously without the commercial incentive to steer outcomes that exists at any vendor’s own facility. Diebold Nixdorf, one of the hardware providers represented in the lab, noted in a statement to Payments Dive that retailers can experience how their systems perform in realistic store scenarios rather than in conditions a vendor has controlled.

How a Software Vendor Is Using It to Close Deals

The facility’s value shows up concretely in how at least one software customer uses it. Altaine, a digital commerce technology firm whose ordering platform serves BP, Pizza Hut, and Subway, brings prospective retail clients to the lab to walk through end-to-end order flows on physical hardware rather than emulated screens. Jo Gelb, Altaine’s co-founder and chief operating officer, told Payments Dive that pairing a software demonstration with real physical devices is considerably more persuasive than running an emulator. She also noted that Kitestring’s hands-on work in the lab has made the team nearly as fluent in Altaine’s technology as Altaine’s own staff, a level of familiarity that a staged demo cannot produce and that retailers conducting due diligence have reason to value.

54% of Retailers Say They Can’t Keep Up. POS Is Where That Shows.

Research conducted by Retail Systems Research, sponsored by Jumpmind and released at NRF 2026, found that 54% of North American retailers surveyed say they cannot keep up with the pace of technology change, and 49% say they struggle to quantify the return on in-store technology investments. POS modernization sits squarely inside both problems. The decision involves coordinating hardware and software from multiple vendors across a store footprint that may number in the hundreds, and it has to be justified to leadership that is already uncertain about technology ROI.

Justin Clark, a retail technology specialist at Kitestring, told Payments Dive that retailers evaluating the market today are looking for architectures capable of unifying digital orders, in-store checkout, kiosks, mobile transactions, and third-party platform orders from services like DoorDash and Uber Eats within a single system. He also noted that the hardware landscape has become more mix-and-match, with components from different suppliers interoperable as long as they share a common operating system, whether Android, Linux, or Windows. The number of configurations worth testing before a commitment is made has grown alongside that flexibility.

Built on Walmart’s Complexity, Aimed at Everyone Else’s

Kitestring’s customers generally post annual revenues above $300 million, Schwab told Payments Dive, and the roster includes major grocers, department stores, and large convenience store chains. Walmart and Sam’s Club, where much of the firm’s management team built its POS expertise over two decades, now account for roughly 20% of revenue. The company has about 140 employees and is privately held and family-owned, led by CEO Jared Smith, who acquired the business from his father, Larry Smith.

The lab was not designed for one retailer’s environment. Kitestring has spent more than two decades implementing and supporting store systems at a scale most retailers will never match, and the vendor and hardware roster it has assembled in Bentonville is still growing.

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