Pitney Bowes will deal primarily with selling the equipment, with secure payment processor First Data creating and delivering physical card readers and virtual terminals. Pitney Bowes will also offer the merchant services enabling the card payments to be processed.

With the UK Card Association’s August estimation that £153bn worth of sales had gone through point of sale transaction terminals in the 12 months preceding August 2012, Pitney Bowes acknowledged the rapid growth potential of the market.

The manufacturer said it had noticed a gap in the market and looks to stand out from the competition by offering reasonable pricing and customer discounts on day-to-day business equipment.

For example, once customers process £10,000 worth of sales through their terminals, they are offered a 5% discount across Pitney Bowes’ portfolio. As sales increase, so will discounts across franking equipment and office supplies from the manufacturer.

Pitney Bowes channel and marketing manager Matthew Lampton said the move was "a natural extension" of its current offerings based on its 90 years’ of experience providing secure payments solutions for Royal Mail.

He said: "This is a natural progression for us as we seek to diversify our product portfolio.

"We take pride in our customers’ success and Pitney Bowes’ offering is geared towards giving SMEs in particular good value. With our solution, the more SMEs sell, the more they make."

The service launched last month with three new salespeople at the time and one more starting today. These will be based at Pitney Bowes’ Harlow office, which acted as the company’s European headquarters until it moved to Hatfield in November.

The team is initially targeting existing customers in the healthcare, professional services, education, travel and motoring sectors.

Lampton said: "There was a tremendous amount of excitement from our customers when we asked them about it. It has gone really well in terms of numbers and there has been a fantastic, positive response."

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