TS (Tower Systems) PAY - Embedded Payment (iOS) — payment connector

TS (Tower Systems) PAY - Embedded Payment (iOS) is not a point-of-sale system — it is the payment connector that joins a point-of-sale system to the terminal, through Tyro. It isn't a till — it's the payment module inside the iOS app of a Melbourne POS house that's been going since 1981 and has answered to a Canadian owner since 2024.

Worth being clear about what this is, because the directories list it alongside the tills: you do not buy this instead of a point-of-sale system, you buy it to connect one you already have.

First thing to be clear about: this record is a connector, not a point-of-sale system. Tower Systems PAY is the embedded payment piece in Tower's iOS app — the bit that pushes the sale amount to the terminal so nobody keys it in twice. The till itself is Tower's own retail software, and that's what you're really choosing when you choose this.

Tower started in 1981, when Mark Fletcher wrote an accounting system for newsagents at his kitchen table. First employee in 1982. In 1996 the company bought Forest Hill Newsagency outright so staff had a real shop to work in, and in 2000 it bought RED Software, which brought jewellers and bike shops into the customer base. Head office has been in Hawthorn, Melbourne since 2009. Today it supports more than 3,500 retailers across Australia and New Zealand, with the software built separately for 19 specialty trades — newsagents, jewellers, bike shops, bookshops, pet stores, garden centres, antique dealers, firearms retailers. It is explicitly not built for hospitality, and Tower says groups should be 15 shops or fewer.

The ownership change is the thing most Tower customers won't have noticed. Since November 2024 Tower has been part of Constellation Software (TSX: CSU), through its Vela APX operating group. Constellation buys vertical-market software and keeps it running rather than merging it away, and Tower says the existing team stayed put — but it does mean the company behind your till is now a Toronto-listed acquirer, not a Melbourne family business.