What you need to buy
POS hardware: what you need, and what you can skip
The question behind most searches here is practical: what machine do I need to print receipts and scan barcodes? The short answer is that you need less than the bundles suggest, and none of it on the first day.
Modern point of sale software runs on ordinary devices, and the peripherals it talks to are commodity hardware built to standards that have been stable for years. That means you can start with a phone and add pieces as volume justifies them, rather than buying a package up front and discovering which parts you never use.
What follows is each piece, what it is actually for, what it roughly costs relative to the others, and the order worth buying them in.
What you get
What this gives you
The device: phone, tablet or laptop
The till itself. Anything you already own works; a tablet on a stand is the sweet spot for most counters. No proprietary terminal required.
Receipt printer: 80mm thermal
The commodity standard. Bluetooth or USB, no ink ever, and cheap consumables. Buy this first if you print receipts — it is the piece that most changes how the counter feels.
Barcode scanner: optional at first
A phone camera reads barcodes adequately. A handheld reader is faster and worth buying once you are scanning enough items a day to notice the difference.
Cash drawer: driven by the printer
Most drawers open from a port on the receipt printer, so they need no connection of their own. Only worth buying if you take meaningful cash.
Card terminal: from your payment provider
Comes from whoever processes your cards, not from your software vendor. Ask whether it can be integrated with the till or will stand alone.
A label printer: later, and only sometimes
Useful if you price loose goods or relabel stock. Genuinely unnecessary for most shops selling pre-barcoded products.
What to buy, and in what order
Start with nothing. Run the till on a device you already own for a week or two of real trading — that is long enough to learn which of the peripherals you actually reach for, which is not always what you would have predicted.
Then buy the receipt printer, if customers expect a printed receipt in your trade. It is the piece that changes the counter experience most, and an 80mm thermal printer is cheap, has no ink and takes rolls you can buy anywhere.
Add the cash drawer at the same time if you take meaningful cash, because it connects to the printer rather than to the computer and the two are naturally bought together. Add the scanner when the phone camera starts feeling slow, which is usually somewhere around fifty scanned items a day.
Leave the label printer until you have a specific reason. Most shops that buy one in a bundle never set it up.
- Week 1: a device you already own, nothing else
- Then: 80mm thermal receipt printer, Bluetooth or USB
- With it: a cash drawer, if cash is a meaningful share of takings
- When scanning feels slow: a handheld barcode reader
- Only with a specific reason: a label printer, a customer display, a weighing scale
What to avoid buying
Proprietary terminals, unless your software requires them — and if it does, that is worth knowing before you choose the software, because it sets the price of every future and replacement till.
All-in-one bundles sold as a package. They are convenient and they routinely include a label printer, a customer display or a scale that never gets used, while making it harder to replace one failed component cheaply.
Long-term hardware leases attached to a payment contract. They are frequently the most expensive way to acquire equipment that costs comparatively little to buy outright, and they tie your choice of payment provider to your hardware.
Anything that can only be bought from your software vendor. Receipt printers, scanners and drawers are commodity items; a vendor that sells them exclusively has priced your future expansion for you.
Compatibility, in plain terms
Receipt printers: 80mm thermal is the near-universal standard, and most speak the same command language. Bluetooth suits a mobile or moving till; USB suits a fixed counter and never needs pairing. Both work with sell.ke, and a printer you already own very likely works as-is.
Scanners: almost all handheld barcode readers present themselves as a keyboard, which means they work with any software that accepts typing, with no driver and no configuration. This is why scanners are the least risky hardware purchase in the list.
Cash drawers: the common arrangement is a drawer connected to the receipt printer by a cable, opened by a signal the printer sends. Buy the drawer after the printer so you can match the connector rather than the other way round.
Card terminals: supplied by your payment provider. The question worth asking them is whether it can receive an amount from your till and return a result, or whether it is standalone — the difference is whether card payments reconcile themselves or by hand.
Questions
POS hardware — questions
What machine do I need to print receipts and scan barcodes?
A device running the POS software — a phone, tablet or laptop you already own — plus an 80mm thermal receipt printer over Bluetooth or USB. Scanning does not need a separate machine to begin with, because the phone camera reads barcodes; a handheld reader is a speed upgrade you buy when the camera starts feeling slow.
Do I need to buy special POS hardware?
Not with software that runs on ordinary devices. Receipt printers, barcode scanners and cash drawers are commodity products built to long-standing standards, so you can buy from any supplier and replace a single failed item cheaply. Proprietary terminals are only necessary when the software requires them, which is worth checking before choosing the software.
Will my existing receipt printer work?
Most likely, if it is an 80mm thermal printer connecting over Bluetooth or USB — that covers the large majority of printers in shops today. The same is true of handheld scanners, which almost always behave as keyboards and therefore work with no setup at all.
How does the cash drawer open?
Usually from the receipt printer: the drawer plugs into a port on the printer and opens when the printer receives a signal at the end of a sale. That is why the two are bought together, and why buying the printer first lets you match the connector.
Can I use a phone as a barcode scanner?
Yes — the camera reads standard retail barcodes well enough for ordinary shop use, which means scanning costs nothing to start. Once you are scanning enough items that the half-second difference adds up, a handheld reader is inexpensive and noticeably faster.
What hardware do I need?
None to start. sell.ke runs in a browser and as an Android app, so a phone, tablet or laptop you already own is a working till on day one — the phone camera reads barcodes. When volume justifies it, add an 80mm thermal receipt printer (Bluetooth or USB), a handheld scanner and a cash drawer the printer opens. There is no proprietary terminal to buy and no per-terminal licence, so a second till on a busy Saturday costs nothing.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
Does it keep working when the internet drops?
The counter does. Offline mode keeps taking sales, printing receipts and reserving stock while the connection is down, then reconciles everything when it returns — so a bad afternoon costs you connectivity, not revenue or a gap in the record. The parts that are inherently online stay online: card and mobile-money authorisation, tax-authority submission, and the storefront itself all need a live link.
How long does setup take?
A single-counter shop is usually selling the same day. The work is the product list, not the software: import a spreadsheet, scan barcodes, or let Amina build products from a supplier invoice or a photo of your price list. A multi-location business with thousands of SKUs and opening stock counts should plan about a week and run the old system alongside for a fortnight. The 14-day trial is long enough to do exactly that.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
POS systems explained
What a point of sale system is, what it replaces, and how to choose one.
Mobile POS
A full till on a phone or tablet — on the shop floor, at a market, on a round.
Best POS for a small business
How to judge one honestly, and the trap that catches most first-time buyers.
How to take card & mobile payments
What you need to take each payment type, and what each one actually costs.
Cloud POS
One copy of your data, reachable from anywhere, with no server in the back office.
Pricing
Four plans, one subscription, no per-terminal licence and no cut of your sales.
Go deeper on a feature
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Setup, growth and the plumbing
Trial, product import, opening stock, eTIMS enrolment and a custom domain — in the order they matter.
Stock you can trust
Batch and expiry, serial numbers, reorder levels, stock takes and the formulas behind them.
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.