Leaf is a platform technology by Leaf Holdings, Inc. that serves as a central hub for small business

commerce Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, natio ...

. The Leaf platform consists of a

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being comput ...

built specifically for

Point of Sale The point of sale (POS) or point of purchase (POP) is the time and place at which a retail transaction is completed. At the point of sale, the merchant calculates the amount owed by the customer, indicates that amount, may prepare an invoice f ...

(POS), and a

cloud-based Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

software tool for business management, analytics, and customer engagement. Leaf is designed to help

retail store Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...

s, restaurants, and other small businesses improve the speed and ease of checkout, and to help business owners obtain better insight into, and control over their operations. The company has no active website and is apparently defunct.

History

Leaf was founded in January 2011 by Aron Schwarzkopf and Sebastian Castro and is financially backed by angel investors. Schwarzkopf graduated from

Babson College Babson College is a private business school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Established in 1919, its central focus is on entrepreneurship education. It was founded by Roger W. Babson as an all-male business institute, but became coeducational ...

with a degree in

entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

in 2010 and a vague idea of how he wanted to revolutionize the way local companies do business in a world increasingly shifting to the cloud. Since then, he has led Leaf from an idea on a napkin through the introduction of its built-for-business tablet in late 2012, to a platform that processes more than $30 million a year in payments. Leaf started in the

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

metro market and recently revealed plans to move into more than 12 US markets in 2013.

Technology

The Leaf platform is made up of three distinct pieces that work together to serve as the hub for small business commerce: The LeafPresenter, LeafBusiness, and the Leaf App Store. *The LeafPresenter is an Android-based tablet built specifically for retail POS and is designed to replace traditional cash registers. With technology including a magnetic stripe card reader, near field communication (NFC), Europay MasterCard Visa (EMV), and front and rear-facing cameras, it is capable of accepting payments via traditional

credit card A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...

gift card A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value card, stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purcha ...

s, next-generation payment methods such as

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

LevelUp LevelUp is an American mobile ordering and mobile payments platform created by Boston, Massachusetts–based start-up SCVNGR. On July 25, 2018, it was announced that LevelUp would be acquired for US$390 million by Grubhub, an online food deliv ...

, and a number of

mobile wallet A digital wallet, also known as an e-wallet, is an electronic device, online service, or software program that allows one party to make electronic transactions with another party bartering digital currency units for goods and services. This can ...

s. By taking an agnostic approach to payment acceptance, the company allows merchants to work with the payment processors of their choice. *LeafBusiness is an online analytics and management portal that provides merchants with insights into their business. The portal is accessible from any device (tablet,

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tech ...

), and includes inventory management, employee management, analytics and reporting tools for merchants. *The Leaf App Store is designed to supplement and extend the core features in Leaf's technology platform by allowing third-party developers to create applications that run on the LeafPresenter and integrate with LeafBusiness. For example, developers could create customized apps that cater to specific business needs or vertical markets such as payroll and inventory management, restaurant reservation systems or salon appointment tools.

References

{{reflist Software companies established in 2011 Cloud communication platforms American companies established in 2011