You know how when you go to those future stores where clerks have credit card scanners on their phones, you don’t have to go to a sales desk because there IS NO SALES DESK? Imagine if you had the same sort of situation going on in your store – or better yet, imagine if you had your own mobile business going on and all you had to do to get some cash from someone was to swipe their card along the side of your Android device? That time has come, the hardware is here, and Verizon’s got your back. What Verizon has revealed today is no less than the Intuit GoPayment App and Credit Card Reader, a hardware/software combination that’ll allow your small business to go mobile instantly.
What you’ve got here is a little piece of hardware that plus in to your Android device (basically any Android device, mind you,) and works with an app that you’ve got on your smartphone or tablet to make grabbing payments as easy as swiping a credit card and tapping a few buttons. And what does this little thing plug in to, you might ask? The audio jack. Weird! Of course, if you want to know, this system also works on BlackBerry and iOS as well, so everyone can jump onboard should they not want to make the cool choice and jump to a brand new Motorola Droid 3 or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE.
Small business owners will delight in their ability to work with the app to quickly create a list of frequently sold items, making the whole process of adding sales tax, tips, and customized receipts as simple as possible. Sensitive credit card data is never stored on the device, and all data is encrypted twice, one via the card reader itself and another via the GoPayment app. Transactions can be synced once they’ve been made with recent versions of QuickBooks on PC, Mac, and soon online, all of this through GoPayments’ extended ecosystem.
The actual hardware is completely free after you activate your GoPayment account and sent a mail-in rebate of $29.97 – aka you’ve gotta lay down that price at the register, but you get it all back once you mail for it. The way Verizon and GoPayment makes money on this whole situation is through a percentage of your transactions. They do mention that “basic service has no monthly, transaction or cancellation fees, and offers a competitive 2.7 percent discount rate for swiped transactions,” while “a paid version of GoPayment is also available for $12.95 a month and provides a low discount rate of 1.7 percent for swiped transactions.” Check out the full details on pricing in the gallery below.
At the moment it does not appear that you need to have a Verizon-carried device to work with GoPayment, and all of these services and the one bit of hardware are available starting today.
Excellent. What a fantastic way for criminals to fake the hardware and create replica software that looks the same and get all your card details and PIN at the same time.
It is a great idea, absolutely, but the potential for fraud here is immense. Imagine your in a huge department store, a salesman (sorry salesperson) dressed appropriately walks up sells you the couch, “Show me some identification. Swipe your credit card. Here fill in your delivery address”. Bang instant identity theft.
Or even better set up a stall at the produce market, buy produce from
the supermarket, smack the Organic grown sign on and collect hundreds of
details in a day.
Square is Better,
Just purchased a android Razor even though its not listed under compatible devices for gopayment was hoping it would be and wasnt listed just because its new
The PayPal Here card reader is not able to swipe credit cards on my phone.
I have Droid RAZR model XT912. Will Intuit work on this phone?
Country: US
Device: DROID RAZR
OS: 4.1.2
App version: 1.7.2