Cobalt Retail POS — bank compatibility

Cobalt Retail is a point-of-sale system for retail, built by Merlin Software. Rural merchandise and farm supply — an Australian family business that has been at it since 1981 and never left the niche.

Certified on mx51, which is the engine behind several banks’ own terminal offerings rather than something a merchant buys by name.

Certified to do phone and mail order.

The mx51 integration uses SPI .NET and was last certified in August 2023, on Windows.

Merlin Software Pty Ltd has been building retail management systems since 1981 and describes itself as an Australian family business, Australian made and owned. Cobalt RMS is the product: natively integrated applications for sales, inventory, accounting, payroll, workshop and online store, deployed either on-premises or in a private cloud. Louise Garland is managing director, with Bradley Scott as general manager and Dwayne McFee running development.

The niche is the interesting part. The customers putting their names to testimonials are rural — CEPA Co-operative, Bade Ness Rural, Frankland Rural — a market most POS vendors never touch. A rural merchandise store needs account customers on 30-day terms, a workshop module for servicing, and stock ranging from fencing wire to animal health lines, all on one docket. Hospitality-first cloud POS cannot do that, which is why vertical systems this old are still trading.

They also resell the hardware, POS peripherals, Microsoft 365, web hosting and domains — one throat to choke, which suits a store with no IT staff and ties you to a small Australian company for all of it. Ask what version the current customer base is on and how many sites are live on it, because a long-lived private system can quietly become a single-developer product.

Merlin Software also has Merlin POS.