How much does a POS system cost in Cambodia?

A notebook and a calculator cost nothing up front, which is why most independent shops here still run on them. The bill arrives differently: stock is guessed, the drawer doesn’t match the screen at closing time, and nobody can say which items actually make money. When the tax department wants an export, someone types it by hand.

Excel is the same story with formatting. It works until a staff member edits the wrong cell, and it can’t take a payment or update stock while you sell.

Loyverse, the most common free app in Southeast Asian shops, checks out as of 10 October 2026: the core POS is free, with a 31-day sales history. Practical features sit behind per-store add-ons — unlimited sales history from $5 a month, and employee management or advanced inventory at $25 a month each. A shop that needs two of those is paying $50 a month, or $600 a year.

None of these generic apps are built around KHQR, riel-and-dollar pricing, or Cambodia’s tax exports. They fit a shop in any country; that is exactly their limitation here.

Cambodian POS vendors such as Innolabs (quoted from $299 a year), CamboPOS, POSFlow and ePenh sell the software with hardware, technician visits and an annual contract. For a restaurant that wants a kitchen printer and someone to call, that can be the right shape of purchase. For a one-counter shop it is a hard no: the year-one cost starts near where a year of cloud subscriptions ends.

KHQR — the QR standard behind Bakong — is free for merchants to accept. Cambodian banks publish a flat “transaction fee: free” for merchants, with no setup or monthly maintenance charge. So the real question is not what KHQR costs, but whether your POS speaks it at the till instead of sitting in a separate bank app that never sees the sale.

Chmaba is a cloud POS made in and for Cambodia: KHQR, riel and dollar, and the workflows of six trades (cafe, restaurant, mart, electronics, phone shop, general retail) switched on when you pick your trade. Setup takes minutes on the phone or tablet you already own, with no payment details.

Counter money goes straight to your own ABA or Bakong account. Chmaba never holds it and takes no cut of sales — the subscription is the whole bill:

If you want a Sunmi terminal delivered, a technician in the shop and printed receipts from day one, a local hardware bundle serves you better — that is what their higher price buys. And if your shop needs offline mode, connected scales or table reservations, Chmaba doesn’t have those yet; they are on the roadmap, and we would rather say so.

Chmaba itself is built and run end to end by AI agents on NanoCorp, which is how a $0.99 subscription can still pay for updates and support.