What is an account?

Point of Sale (POS) Glossary

An account is used in a POS system to keep track of a buyer, a prospect, or a previous customer. It is a file that contains all of a person’s data, including name, contact information, notes, loyalty data, items on hold, transactional information, and more.

Customers will often use a username and password to access their customer account on an e-commerce site. When at a physical store, a loyalty card, phone number, or other scheme links activity to their account.

A point of sale system may allow users to check out as guests online or at a physical store, without an obvious connection to an account. However, the system may still create an account that records information about the person. For instance, it might link to an account created using identification collected from a customer’s payment method.