NCR recently entered the competitive mobile point-of-sale market with the release of its NCR Silver tablet solution. NCR is known for being the pioneer in cash register technology (its name is National Cash Register, for goodness sake), but it's considered a provider for big retailers, not mom-and-pops.

With NCR Silver, NCR has introduced a cloud-based POS solution made expressly for small businesses. It includes some cool features like the ability to run email-marketing campaigns and perform relatively robust customer data analysis (Mobile Payments Today's sister site Retail Customer Experience profiled the solution earlier this summer.)

Now NCR is looking to sweeten the deal by offering the first 1,000 small businesses to try NCR Silver a lifetime pricing guarantee — at half the regular price.

"Offering small business owners the ability to connect with customers through mobile payments was just the first step in addressing the increasingly sophisticated needs of the small business owner," said Christian Nahas, NCR vice president, small and medium business team.

Nahas said NCR recognizes the need for affordable tools to be combined in an easy-to-use solution that helps to free up business owners' time to focus on their customers.

NCR's lifetime pricing offer is a generous one, and it illustrates how larger companies that missed out on the first wave of mobile solutions are beginning to pay attention to the technologies — and to the smaller entrants that are now encroaching on their markets. It also shows the lengths to which the incumbents can, and will, go to compete.

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