Abstract: Disclosed herein are payment systems and methods for accepting and reconciling consumer credit or debit account transactions between merchants and consumers. The described systems and methods include merchant-employee POS application software that can be downloaded onto portable communication devices such that portable POS terminals can be easily deployed into a mobile sales network. Further disclosed are security techniques that can be employed within this system analytics systems and methods for gleaning useful data from the aggregation of multiple merchant employee POS terminal sales data.