Elevating Payments

Overview

We needed to grow

Zeller has devoted its resources to catering to the needs of large-scale and enterprise businesses for a considerable period of time. Our top-notch Terminal 1 hardware exceeded expectation upon its release, providing us the leverage to serve these clientele through our advanced SDK integration. This coordination backs almost any point-of-sale system available in the market, not excluding Oracle, Impos, Lightspeed, and H&L among others.

Why was there a bottleneck

As our enterprise-facing segment experiences substantial growth, our analysis shows that while small to medium-sized businesses are drawn to Zeller for our highly competitive fees, we have yet to see strong traction in this sector. Square, the current market leader, has achieved a 60% penetration rate in this space. As a payments provider, we aim to capture a share of this market by delivering even greater value than both industry leaders and the big four banks—offering benefits like everyday settlement to third-party bank accounts and the lowest fees in the industry.

In the meantime, our next-generation terminal hardware offers increased processing power to support complex Android applications. Beyond simply accepting card payments, we aim to provide customers with a richer feature set. Ideally, this new hardware will serve as a gateway to a broader range of Zeller payment products.

Problems to solve

We leveraged our powerful internal analytics tools to gain deeper insights into user behaviour. Our analysis revealed that these merchants typically manage modest inventories, ranging from 10 to 200 items, and prioritise simplicity and efficiency in their operations. Rather than complex enterprise-level solutions, they need intuitive, easy-to-use inventory management and reporting tools that seamlessly integrate with their existing workflows.

SMEs maintain a moderate level of inventories, ranging from 10 to 200 items.

Inventory is decoupled from the payment infrastructure.

No flexibility on discounts and service changes.

Discovery

With a clear understanding of the key challenges our merchants face, we collaborated with leadership and the product team to define essential features for our POS Lite product.

01.

Add a simple item

It is really simple, just the item name, category and price. 90% of merchants will use this.

02.

Support advanced items

Support for advanced elements. They must have attributes and modifiers.

03.

Let the sale speak

We need to enable item addition to a shopping basket, seamlessly linking it to a payment stream that leverages our existing Zeller payment infrastructure. The system should also support discounts, surcharges, and robust reporting capabilities.

In addition to these features, we should support cloud sync, allowing merchants to place orders and process payments across all payment-enabled devices, including the Zeller App and Terminal 2 hardware. Inventory management should be centralised, seamlessly accessible via the Zeller Dashboard.

The POS Lite platform should support both percentage and fixed amount discounts, as well as service charges, allowing merchants to adjust pricing for specific occasions. It should also include support for cash sales, allowing merchants to streamline tax reporting by accessing all sales records through our robust reporting system.

Merchant Personas

Zeller Merchants

We received a quote from one of our customers, Lina, a small business owner behind the By Taco brand. She creates bespoke, handmade items such as water pitchers and scarves, travels to art markets across the country and uses her Zeller terminal to accept payments on the move. Lina is a typical Zeller customer — an independent entrepreneur with dynamic business needs. Based on her experience, we developed a series of personas to help us better visualise and address the challenges faced by merchants like her.

Tim Mosciski

Electrician

Sole Trader

Mobile Location

Tim runs his own electrical service, handling everything from small residential repairs to larger installations for small businesses. His job is highly mobile—he's constantly on the road, traveling between job sites, working from his van, and managing inventory on the go.

How Tim works

He primarily operates solo but occasionally hires subcontractors for bigger projects. Every job requires precise tracking of parts, materials, and labour hours, so he needs a seamless way to calculate and present accurate invoices.

Challenges

Quickly finding the right items & prices – Tim often needs to add multiple items (e.g., wiring, fuses, switches) to a bill while also factoring in labour charges. He doesn’t have time to scroll through endless menus or manually enter prices.

Accurate job costing – A mistake in recording parts or labour means lost revenue. He needs a system that helps him categorise and track materials and services with minimal effort.

Reliable mobile payments – Many of his clients pay on-site, so he needs a payment terminal that works anywhere, even in areas with limited Wi-Fi access. A mobile network connection is essential.

Features required

Item Management

Item Search

Sales Reporting

Modifier Sets

Attribute Sets

Lorene Abbott

Plant Shop Owner

Small Business

Fixed Location

Lorene owns a cozy indoor plant shop in Ringwood, specialising in a curated selection of houseplants, pots, and gardening accessories. Her store attracts plant lovers looking for everything from easy-care options like Snake Plants and Pothos to more exotic choices like Fiddle Leaf Figs and Monstera Deliciosa.

How Lorene works

With around 200 inventory items, she needs an efficient way to organise products into categories—small plants, medium plants, rare species, pots, and accessories—so she can quickly find them during checkout. Managing sales efficiently is crucial, especially during peak hours when multiple customers are browsing and making purchases.

Challenges

Finding the right plant quickly – With so many different plants and categories, scrolling through a long list during checkout is inefficient. She needs a way to search or filter items instantly.

Seamless payment processing – Whether customers are purchasing a single plant or a full set of pots and accessories, checkout should be smooth and fast to avoid long wait times.

Accurate sales reporting – Lorene needs detailed insights into what plants are selling best so she can actively monitor her shop’s performance, adjust stock accordingly, and make informed business decisions.

Features required

POS Integration

Item Search

Sales Reporting

Modifier Sets

Attribute Sets

Curating Momentum

Terminal 2

Terminal 2 will be the key entry point for Zeller POS Lite, offering a reimagined user experience tailored for modern businesses. With a brand-new form factor, we’ve made a conscious decision to remove the built-in printer, reducing paper waste and contributing to a more sustainable solution. Instead, digital receipts can be seamlessly sent via email or SMS, aligning with the evolving preferences of both merchants and customers

Catalogue: The backbone of POS

With the front end in place, our next focus is on designing the back end of the POS system. At the heart of this is the catalogue, the single source of truth that seamlessly connects all payment interfaces - terminal, Zeller app and invoices. A well-structured catalogue ensures consistency in every transaction, regardless of where or how payments are processed.

I designed the catalogue with maximum flexibility in mind to meet both simple and complex business needs. Users can opt for a quick and easy set-up, adding basic items with a ‘set and forget’ approach. Alternatively, for businesses that require more control, the catalogue allows for detailed configuration, allowing merchants to define product variants, apply multiple modifiers and set up flexible discount structures.

Desktop Dashboard

Let’s talk about the desktop design of the product catalogue. Our aim was to give users maximum flexibility in configuring their items, whether they’re adding something simple or managing a highly complex product. The design approach ensures that merchants can effortlessly manage all item configurations from a single, intuitive page. To achieve this, we have implemented progressive disclosure, a technique that intelligently reveals additional form fields only when they become relevant. This means users aren’t overwhelmed with unnecessary information, resulting in a streamlined, clutter-free experience that seamlessly adapts to their specific needs.

The catalogue we’ve created is seamlessly integrated into the entire Zeller ecosystem, ensuring that merchants see a consistent view of their products everywhere - from the POS sales detail drawer to the invoices they download. Every item in the catalogue is directly linked to transactions, bridging the critical gap between what’s bought and how it’s paid for. This powerful link between product data and payment methods unlocks advanced analytics capabilities, enabling us to provide deeper, more insightful reporting. Merchants not only gain visibility into individual sales, but also valuable insights into customer buying patterns, payment preferences and sales performance - helping them to strategically optimise their business decisions. See the next chapter for more details.

Zeller App

We’ve extended the POS Lite experience to the Zeller app, allowing customers to accept payments seamlessly - without the need to purchase a terminal upfront. This makes it easier for businesses to get started with Zeller and provides a flexible and accessible entry point into our ecosystem.

By keeping their catalogue in Zeller, dealers have instant access to their entire inventory on any device. Whether they’re using the app on a phone, tablet or Zeller terminal, their product list, pricing and configurations remain perfectly synchronised. All they need to do is log in and start taking payments, ensuring a smooth and consistent experience, no matter where or how they sell.

In July 2026, Zeller launched our new tablet software - an exciting step in developing POS Lite into a full-featured POS system that outperforms anything currently on the market. The design process started in Jan 2024 was completed on Jun 2024,. The new system now offer advanced functionality tailored for growing businesses and will integrate seamlessly with our terminal products for a smooth, unified experience. It’s all part of our vision to make Zeller the most powerful and flexible payments ecosystem in Australia.

As the design lead on this project, I delivered: