KITOMBA POS — bank compatibility

KITOMBA is a point-of-sale system for hair and beauty and retail. Began in a Wellington bedroom in 2002 and has been Canadian-owned since 2014, which almost nobody in the salon trade realises.

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

Certified to do tipping, cash out and phone and mail order.

The mx51 integration uses SPI Java and was last certified in June 2022, on MacOS and Windows. mx51 holds 2 separate certified builds for it, so what works depends which one you are on.

Kitomba was started in 2002 by engineer and entrepreneur Tom Murphy, working out of his bedroom in Wellington. It grew into one of the standard salon and spa systems across Australia and New Zealand — appointments, online booking, point of sale, stock, rosters, targets, consultation forms and marketing — and it still runs its head office out of Wellington with a team spread across both countries. The company says thousands of salons, spas and clinics use it.

In 2014 Jonas Software acquired it. Jonas is part of Constellation Software, the Toronto-listed acquirer, and it has assembled a whole hair and beauty portfolio: Shortcuts in 2013, Kitomba and Salon Manager in 2014, WhatSalon in 2018 and GuestVision in 2019. So several of the salon systems a merchant might compare against each other are in fact owned by the same group.

Kitomba's own site does not mention the ownership at all, which is typical. For a salon owner it is worth knowing because it explains the product's stability — Constellation businesses rarely get shut down or forcibly migrated — and it also explains why the pricing does not move much.