Budding Whenuapai entrepreneur harnesses roadside tech

While cashless is great for those of us not wanting to carry money, spare a thought for New Zealand's young entreprenuers using roadside stalls to bolster their pocket money.

Whenuapai seven-year-old, Dexter, ran into just such a problem when he started selling bags of lemons and grapefruit in order to get the cash to buy the newly released Lego Dimensions for Xbox.

While Dexter made $98 in the first couple of days selling the citrus, he found many people didn't carry cash. So the tech-savvy entrepreneur turned to technology to help him out becoming the youngest product tester for a new app that allows stall holders to take payments via Eftpos and credit cards.

The technology was supplied by New Zealand's SmartPay, with managing director Bradley Gerdis setting Dexter's rustic stall up with the Till2Go 'till in your pocket' app.

The newly upgraded app doesn't charge for debit card acceptance and credit card processing is charged at bank rates. The additional hardware required to facilitate secure card processing costs 'less than $50+gst per month' Smartpay says. Secure Wi-Fi is also required.

Armed with an iPad and Till2Go, Dexter is hitting the road again to boost his takings and ensure he stays up to date with the latest Xbox games.

The free app, which has been available since mid-2014 and has been downloaded from the Apple app store more than 1000 times, has been upgraded to include a new tax invoicing feature, Bill2Go, making the app usable by a wider business network and ensuring full compliance with IRD requirements with minimal extra effort for users, Smartpay says.

The Bill2Go addition enables the creation of one-off invoices listing sale items, descriptions, costs and GST components. Sales records are retained by the app and the information can be emailed to susers as .csv files.

"There is a whole world of business being conducted based on movement these days – pop-up sotres, coffee vans, market stall-holders," says Gerdis.

"It's handy for tradies and other service people like mobile car cleaners and landscapers, too," he adds.

One-off or sporadic activities and fundraisers, such as sausage sizzles and school fairs, can also make use of the app, he says.

"The flipside of the popularity of electronic payment methods is that people often don't carry cash anymore, and Till2Go is a way to make sure you can easily convert a potential customer, and record all details of the transaction, regardless of how they prefer to pay," Gerdis says.