Commonwealth Bank's tablet point of sale device, dubbed Albert, has debuted for its first in-store trials in Sydney's Balmain.According to Mark Nagy, head of merchant development and innovation for CBA, the device has completed EMV and PCI testing and, following these field trials, will be launched "as soon as we can get stock". First announced in July 2012 the device, which was developed in association with Idea and Wincor-Nixdorf, has been dogged by delay because of technical complexities. With its release now imminent the CBA is running a two day "hackathon" at Sydney's Cebit computing show to encourage developers to create point of sale applications for the device using the CBA's Pi development platform.More than 100 people have registered for the hackathon, in which teams of up to four people will compete to develop applications for the Hard Rock Café, the Cerebral Palsy Alliance and streetwear retailer Culture Kings. The three winning teams win $10,000 each.Nagy, who was speaking at Cebit, said that Albert was important to the bank in terms of establishing a "beach-head" in the portable point of sale market. However he also acknowledged that the device was loss-leading for the bank and likely to be superseded by POS devices now being marketed to retailers by specialist technology companies."The banks are fighting among each other to say who is the leader. The problem is this is a commoditised market. There are 980,000 [point of sale] terminals so the best way is to develop a better mousetrap," Nagy said.However, technology companies are also building those better mousetraps and Nagy said that there was a "huge portfolio of POS providers that are considering integrating with us."He said CBA had already established a small POS integration unit, although he noted that there was no way that the bank would be able to integrate its services with the hundreds of different POS systems that already existed.Nagy said: "If my name were spelled N A R E V I'd be doing it differently and go to BYO (bring your own) technology." He was referring to CBA chief executive Ian Narev, who has thrown his weight behind the development of the bank's home-grown POS technologies including Albert, Pi, Leo - which turns an iPhone into a payments device - and Emmy, a standalone payments device launched last week for small business."This is the last hurrah of eftpos. The next wave will be merchants bringing their own device." Banks, said Nagy, were "just not quick enough to respond" to the pace of technological change.