Hasta La Gadget!

This week the folks at Verizon have revealed their new collaborative efforts with Square and the Square Card Reader – mobile payments made utterly easy! This little device plugs in to the headphone jack on your iOS or Android device and allows you to take payments via credit card or Square Gift Card – easy as pie. The actual device costs less than the credit you get on your Square account (good as cash, essentially) at $9.97 (with $10 Square credit on your account when you start it up) – sound alright to you?

The Square Card Reader requires no contracts, you’ll have no minimum cash transactions needed ever, and there are no set-up fees. Essentially you’ll be heading in to your local Verizon outlet, tossing down a $10 bill and some change, and heading out the door with a brand new Square Card Reader of your very own. The way Square makes cash is to get a bit of a percentage for each transaction you make with the reader from that point on.

The fees you’ll be working with here is 2.75% of every swiped transaction or 2.5% and 15 cents for each sale that’s manually keyed in. All funds moved with your Square account are automatically deposited in your real-world bank account within (or around) 24 hours, and your whole account can be managed online. In addition to squareup.com, you’ll be able to check your balance and work with basically all of your account information right out of the box with one of several Square apps.

The iOS and Android versions of this app are essentially the same, with the iPad-specific app bringing on some additional management tools you’ll only otherwise be able to access in a web browser. Verizon begins selling the Square Card Reader on the 31st of January, 2013, and you’ll be able to pick them up nationally at most Verizon Wireless stores.

Will you be joining in on the Square fun? Or are you all about the NFC payments with your Google Wallet? If you’re an iPhone or iPad user, have you found any alternatives that you’d suggest as more awesome than Square? Let us know!

[via Verizon]

Square Mobile Payments hit Verizon: iOS and Android card readers ahoy is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While I love the convenience of credit cards, the interest fees and late charges can really throw you for a loop if you don’t pay them off every month. But I might just have to add one more card to my wallet just so I can have the Darth Vader Visa Card.

This awesome Star Wars credit card appears to be available only in Japan, so I’m betting they won’t approve my application – especially since I can’t even fill it out.

It’s probably for the best, anyhow. I can only imagine what would happen if I ever was one minute late with my payment on this card. The Dark Lord himself would probably force choke me (and my wife… and my cat… and my dog) until I paid up – double. Or maybe he’d send an army of clones to my front doorstep to threaten me with their blasters.

You saw what they did to Uncle Owen and Aunt Baru, right? That’s because they were 30 days past-due.

After last week’s leaked news about Google launching its own physical credit card to sit alongside Wallet, a new help site seems to have confirmed the search giant’s intentions. More »

Today book retailer Barnes & Noble confirmed that 63 of their retail stores have been compromised with tampered PIN pads. We originally reported the breaking news earlier this morning, but the company completed an internal investigation today that revealed one PIN pad in each of the 63 stores were tampered with, and that customers who used a credit or debit card on the machines were at risk of stolen personal information.

According to the company, the PIN pads were implanted with “bugs” that allowed the recording of credit card information and debit card PINs. Barnes & Noble ended up disconnecting all of its PIN pads on September 14, and is now only allowing credit card purchases directly through their cash registers for the time being.

Barnes & Noble says that the tampering affected only about 1% of all the company’s PIN pads around the US, and the 63 stores affected are only in a handful of states, including California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. To see if your local store was one of the affected locations, check out the full list of all 63 stores.

Barnes & Noble is urging customers who have swiped their cards at the affected locations to change their debit card PINs as a precaution, as well as keeping an eye on credit card statements for fraudulent charges. However, the company notes that their database hasn’t been breached, and purchases made elsewhere aren’t affected.

Barnes & Noble lists 63 stores affected by PIN hack is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google Wallet’s prepaid card concept has been plagued with its share of security concerns, and though Mountain View seems to have sorted out those issues, it’s now phasing out the prepaid card program entirely. The service was intended to make up for a limited choice in debit and credit cards, and now that Google Wallet accepts any and all plastic, the prepaid option is a bit moot. The cut-off date for adding funds to a Google prepaid card is September 17th, and the prepaid option will vanish entirely on October 17th. Whereas users were previously charged $2.00 per month after 180 days without a transaction, they’ll get slapped with the same fee after 30 days of no purchases. Google says you can request a refund if you have a remaining balance after the prepaid option kicks the bucket, though it’s probably a good idea to just go ahead and spend those leftover dollars.

[Thanks, Chris]

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Wireless

Google Wallet to phase out prepaid card, cut-off date set for October 17th originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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