App rejected under 1.1.8 — connecting to SumUp card reader hardware, NOT a POS system — seeking clarification

Shopify App Store
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Hi everyone,

We built an app called PosBridge. All it does: send the cart total from Shopify POS to a SumUp Solo card reader with one tap, so the merchant doesn’t have to type the amount manually into the terminal. That’s it.

It got rejected under 1.1.8:

“Shopify is not currently accepting apps that connect to a POS system outside of Shopify.”

We don’t think this applies to us, and honestly we’re a bit stuck — looking for input from Shopify staff or anyone who’s been through something similar.

What actually happens

Shopify POS is the only point-of-sale. SumUp Solo is the card reader hardware. Without our app, the merchant has to look at the Shopify POS total and type it into the SumUp terminal by hand. That’s where transcription errors happen — 49.90 typed as 4.99, and so on.

The flow with our app:

  1. Merchant builds the cart in Shopify POS

  2. Taps our POS tile (“Charge with SumUp”)

  3. We send only the amount to SumUp’s reader endpoint — nothing else

  4. Customer taps their card on the Solo device

  5. Confirmation comes back, merchant marks the order paid via Shopify POS’s manual payment method

  6. Done — receipt, inventory, everything else stays in Shopify POS

We don’t send products, orders, customers, or anything that resembles POS data. SumUp gets a number, sends back a confirmation. That’s the whole integration.

The thing that bugs us

Shopify’s own Help Center tells merchants in markets without Shopify Payments POS (Austria, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and others) to do exactly this:

“You need to use a third-party external card reader… Set up the external reader as a custom payment method in Shopify POS… manually mark orders as paid in Shopify POS.” — Help Center: Choosing the right card reader

That’s literally what we automate. So either we’re missing something obvious, or 1.1.8 wasn’t supposed to block this kind of integration.

Looking for help

If anyone from Shopify is reading this — could someone take another look? And if we are missing something, please just tell us what so we can fix it. Right now we have a rejection and no path forward, and we’d love to actually ship this to merchants who need it.

@Liam-Shopify @Gray-Shopify @Andrew_Shopify

Thanks.

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Hey @S.k - thanks for reaching out. I can see why this feels a bit confusing, especially since the POS docs do cover external card terminals/custom payment methods as a merchant workflow.

I can’t override an App Review decision from here, but I’m happy to take a look internally and see if this is something we can raise for clarification on our end. If you can share your app ID and Partner org, along with a quick outline of the SumUp flow, that would be super helpful.

The main details I’d want to confirm are the POS extension target, requested scopes, exactly what gets sent to SumUp, and whether the app ever marks the Shopify order as paid automatically.

One small note too: tagging individual folks directly usually isn’t the best path for review questions, since availability can vary and it can make threads harder to route. Posting the details here or sending them through the proper review/support channel is the safest way to keep things moving.

Hope to hear from you soon, I can set up a DM on my end if you’d prefer to keep things private.

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Hi @Alan_G Thanks for the quick reply.

DM works much better for me, would really appreciate that.

I’ll have the app ID, Partner org, full flow, scopes, sample API request/response, and a short demo video ready to share as soon as you open the conversation on your end.

And noted on the tagging — sorry about that, won’t do it again.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

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Hey @S.k - no worries at all - DMing you!