Commonwealth Bank has developed what it claims is the world's first touch-screen encrypted EMV pin pad. The device, which will serve as the bank's new point of sale terminal, was launched yesterday, with plans to put it into service next year.Albert, as the terminal is known, is part of a new point of sale platform, Pi, which will offer merchants a range of business apps in addition to the re-designed terminal. Some apps have already been developed by the bank, while third parties are working on others. These include inventory management, loyalty fulfilment, customer demographics and other tools.Merchants will be able to customise their own applications. Commonwealth is issuing an app developer kit and will operate an app store. Pi is an Android-based platform that uses industry-standard technologies.Albert is wireless and has a camera on-board for tasks such as reading discount or loyalty vouchers off a smartphone.Albert also has a sibling, Leo, which is a smaller device that can attach to a smartphone and turn it into a payment terminal.Leo will provide serious competition for the smartphone payment devices launched by PayPal and Paymate earlier this year. But where those companies are offering attachments that will read a card's magnetic stripe, Leo will read the magnetic stripe or chip and accept a contactless payment or produce a docket for signing.Commonwealth Bank's executive general manager of corporate banking solutions, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, said: "Forty-six per cent of customer payments are at the point of sale. There is lots of room for improvement in that area."Bayer Rosmarin said merchants would not be converted to Pi automatically.She said the bank was not talking about pricing at this stage.Commonwealth's partners on the project were the design consultancy IDEO and the IT developer Wincor Nixdorf.The plan is for Wincor Nixdorf to market the system in the international market.