Advance Retail POS — bank compatibility

Advance Retail is a point-of-sale system for general retail, hair and beauty, retail and services. Started as a Burroughs bureau service in New Zealand in 1968, now a Constellation asset.

Certified on mx51 and on Tyro. Worth knowing the difference: Tyro is its own acquirer, so that route means banking with Tyro. The mx51 route does not.

Certified for tipping, phone and mail order and surcharging. Tyro rates it a Plus partner.

The mx51 integration uses Spice and was last certified in June 2021, on Windows.

AdvanceRetail goes back to 1968, when it began life in New Zealand as a Burroughs bureau service — punch-card era, before anyone called it retail software. It launched its own product, Omnibus, in 1980, shipped the AdvanceRetail Windows platform in 1998, and was the market leader in New Zealand by 1995. Offices are in Ellerslie, Auckland and Goulburn Street, Sydney, with historical expansion into Malaysia, China, Hong Kong and Ireland. Version 3 landed in 2026.

It is now part of Vela APX, an operating group of Constellation Software Inc, the Toronto-listed vertical-software acquirer. Same owner that holds KRISP Systems, the Brisbane chain-retail POS. So two of the specialty retail POS options in this market answer to the same parent, which is worth knowing if you are putting them head to head.

The fit is specialty chain retail — electronics, fashion, footwear, pharmacy, department stores and franchise groups — with a workflow-driven unified commerce pitch. Pandora came on as a client around 2014-15, which tells you the size of operator it is built for.