It is mostly used in point-of-sale equipment, such as receipt printers, touch monitor and barcode readers.

PoweredUSB, as a proprietary variant of USB, was developed and proposed by IBM, Berg Electronics (now a subsidiary of Amphenol), NCR Corporation, and Microsoft between 1998 and 1999, with the last revision (0.8g) issued in 2004.

The connectors, available from various manufacturers, provide an auto-locking facility to reduce the risk of accidental power failures.

It defines features similar to those addressed by PoweredUSB, but without requiring the use of proprietary connectors.

Instead, the connectors defined in the USB 2.0 and 3.0 standards are continued to be used; higher currents require PD-aware USB-cables, though.