Card Payment Technology Update: Mobile Card Readers

I first started blogging about Mobile credit card processing back in February 2011.  (Card Payment Technology Update: Mobile Card Processing, http://charlottemooney.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/card-payment-technology-update-mobile.html ) .

That was over a year ago so it is high time I gave you an update.

The idea of this emerging technology is to make it much easier for small businesses to accept payments by credit and debit card.  Think about it: people like chiropodists, mobile hairdressers, make-up artists, plumbers and  taxi-drivers work at their customers’ home, or are on the move all the time.  They need to be able to receive payments in an increasingly cash-free world, but a cash register with a merchant terminal is obviously too expensive, bulky and impractical for them to use.

Over the last few years there has been a technology explosion, and millions of us now own devices such as the iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch or Android Phone, which all come with a massive amount of processing power on board.  Mobile payment technology aims to harness the power of these commonly held devices to enable their owners to use them as a card payments processor.

The main players in this new market are Intuit, the QuickBooks people, with their GoPayments system, and Square, which was invented by Twitter founder and technology entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, and Sage Mobile.

Has the idea taken off?  As with any new technology, there have been doubters, and, quite sensibly, many people, especially the older generation, were worried about security issues.  Recently Square, whose slogan is ‘You’ll never miss a sale again’, announced that it was now processing $4 billion worth of payments per year.  So someone must be using it, although sadly these US-based mobile products are still not available in Europe and the UK

There have been some developments, however.  Earlier this month Square started a trial in 30 New York taxi cabs, and has also re-launched its payment app for consumers, formerly known as Card Case, as Pay With Square, which will make it available to Android uses for the first time.

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At Intuit the latest innovation for GoPayments is a funky new card reader which they claim is easier to use, and compatible with a greater range of devices. This was introduced at the start of 2012.

The new GoPayments card reader

GoPayments and Square are going to have some more competition from this month, as PayPal has launched its own mobile card reader device, known as PayPal Here.

It offers a similar range of features and functions to Square and GoPayments, and starts with the tremendous advantage of the existing PayPal customer base of 100 million users worldwide.  They are also undercutting Square on price, although the saving to the small business user is not huge.