A point of sale system is used to track and manage your inventory and ring up sales. A payment processor handles the actual transaction during sales.
Payment processors transmit payment information between relevant parties to complete transactions—information will be sent between your business' bank account and the paying customer’s bank, for example, or between your acquiring bank and the customer’s credit card issuer.
A point of sale system facilitates the transaction in question—if a payment processor connects to your bank, your POS system powers your till. POS systems like Lightspeed can integrate with payment processors to automatically transit information between your inventory system and card reader. In addition, Lightspeed includes tools for inventory management, CRM and data analysis, and we have even developed our own payment processing system: Lightspeed Payments.