Own's point-of-sale device is a customized touchscreen tabletA small Detroit-based company has plans to reinvent the way restaurants, cafes and stores take money from customers.

Own is aiming to make a point-of-sale (POS) system that doesn’t just reinvent the cash register, it turns it into a node on a web-connected information system. Its solution combines the slickness of tablet hardware, the optimization of a custom operating system and the flexibility of a cloud-based infrastructure to make it all happen.

That is, if it works. The company has been testing its system with about 20 beta customers in the Detroit area. It just secured an $850,000 investment round led by Detroit Venture Partners, and plans to move the engineering team to Silicon Valley by mid-October.

Full story: Own takes aim at point-of-sale with ambitious hardware, software and cloud product | VentureBeat.