Former Google Wallet chief Osama Bedier (pictured) returned with a new firm called Poynt offering a mobile point-of-sale terminal running on a forked version of Android.

The new firm is entering a somewhat crowded marketplace but Bedier claimed in a blog that PoyntOS’s strength is the fact it was built for commerce while being open to developers.

The mobile point-of-sale market is dominated by the likes of Square, whose dongle fits to a standard smartphone or tablet.

Bedier claimed that “these solutions lack the security and reliability to achieve mass adoption”.

Meanwhile, the traditional payment terminals provide both security and reliability but come from an era before the birth of the consumer internet and have not really evolved since, he said.

“Innovation and mass adoption have been at odds. That’s why we created Poynt – the world’s first “smart” payment terminal,” he said.

“We consumers carry around supercomputers in our pockets and purses that do magical things we could not imagine even a few short years ago. However, in-store technology still centers around a glorified calculator,” he added.