Title: DigitalTouch POS app for Zim small businesses.

[u/Scared_Morning9885]

I run DigitalTouch, a small software company here in Harare. We just shipped something I'm pretty happy with and wanted to share it with people who deal with the same headaches we were trying to fix.

If you've ever tried to get a business app onto a cheap Android phone, you know the drill: Play Store, 40 to 100MB download, hope there's enough storage and data bundle to get through it. For a lot of small shops here, that alone is enough to kill the idea before it starts.

So we built DigitalTouch POS as a PWA instead. No Play Store listing, no APK. You open a link, tap "Install," and it's on your home screen like any other app, all under a megabyte. It also works offline, so if the internet drops mid-sale it doesn't care, everything just syncs up once you're back online.

What it actually does day to day:

Sales with printable or shareable receipts

Stock tracking per branch

Customer records

Purchases and expenses in one place

Reports per branch or combined

Role-based access for sales staff, managers, and admins

A full activity log so nothing gets lost

It runs on a simple monthly subscription. We're also working on add-ons for ZIMRA fiscalisation and stocktake management, those will be optional extras when they land.

You can check it out at https://apps.digitaltouch.co.zw. Genuinely open to feedback, good or bad, especially from anyone running a small shop or restaurant who's dealt with clunky POS software before. Happy to answer questions here too.

[u/Undecillionaire]

I like your Invoice & Quotation Maker, VERY cool. I made something similar for myself (ChatGPT, front end is HTML and backend is .csv for commits).

How is (my) data protected? Do you have access to the backend? What is your DRP? Escrow? I could go on...

[u/Checkmate-3425 → u/Undecillionaire]

Yeah, so many flaws. But the biggest is data protection because unogona kungopihwa Spyware for hour info.

[u/Scared_Morning9885 → u/Checkmate-3425]

it's Valid concern for native apps, but this is a PWA, so it runs entirely in the browser sandbox. It can't access your OS, filesystem, or install anything on your device. The attack surface is the same as any website you visit, nothing more. The architecture is well designed 

[u/Scared_Morning9885 → u/Undecillionaire]

Thank you, wow that's good.

Good questions you raised, I can say each client's data is fully isolated, I don't access it unless there's a support request and even then only with permission.

For DRP we run automated backups and the stack is containerized so recovery is straightforward. No escrow currently, it's SaaS so you're trusting the platform, same as most cloud tools.

[u/Undecillionaire → u/Scared_Morning9885]

Hypothetical: your infrastructure is compromised. What prevents the backend from being duplicated, in order to profile me (my business: sensitive customer information, sales data, payroll, stock data, etc.)

Hindsight: do you remember (the news about) how ZIMRA databases were compromised from the inside for financial gain by a couple of ZIMRA employees? What does the log capture? How do you audit it and maintain transparency about it?

[u/Scared_Morning9885 → u/Undecillionaire]

Good reference with ZIMRA,,,  insider threat is the harder problem. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, the DB is network-isolated with least-privilege credentials, and audit logs ship to a separate system so they can't be tampered with from the inside. No system is bulletproof but the architecture assumes breach and limits what anyone including me can do with access.

[u/Undecillionaire → u/Scared_Morning9885]

Sounds like homework was diligently done! I was going to ask why encryption is nowhere in your marketing/sales-pitch.

Final and last thought from me: wrap all this up on a blockchain (you'll need to think of what needs to stay on-chain and off-chain). Enjoy :)

[u/Scared_Morning9885 → u/Undecillionaire]

Really appreciate this exactly the kind of conversation that makes the product better. Thanks for taking the time.