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.

In a bid to catch mobile payment rival Square napping, Intuit GoPayment is leaping across the pond to begin an assault on the UK. It’s certainly putting the effort in, having had to rework its hardware to be compatible with Chip-and-Pin and being forced, for legal reasons, to drop the “Go” and “ment” parts of its name. The service is currently in a limited trial before being rolled out to switched-on stallholders and itinerant fraudsters (we kid) nationwide.

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Intuit

Back in July, Reuters reported that Apple was looking to acquire mobile security solutions company AuthenTec for around $356 million. Part of the company’s business involved providing embedded security solutions, including encryption algorithms and other protections to a variety of mobile device makers including LG, Motorola, Samsung and Nokia, but that division is now being sold off to NFC company Inside Secure for around $48 million. The sale suggests Apple’s interest lies more in the company’s other products, including tools for fingerprint sensors and identity management that work with NFC, and use of its patent portfolio.

NFC World reports that the move indicates Apple is interested in holding onto and potentially using AuthenTec’s fingerprint sensors, which the smaller company employs in a combined method with NFC, for potential use in contactless payments. Apple hasn’t yet expressed any overt interest in using NFC in its own devices, of course, and in fact went out of its way to defend the omission of the tech in its latest smartphone, the iPhone 5.

Apple SVP Phil Schiller told AllThingsD in an interview at September’s iPhone 5 announcement that NFC isn’t necessarily the solution to any of consumers’ problems , and suggested that Passbook as it currently exists (redeeming tickets and coupons still requires a barcode scan) more than suits their needs. But you can’t help but notice when you use Passbook how close it is to a complete mobile wallet solution; adding NFC eventually would be easy enough to accomplish, especially if backed by additional security and identification management measures like those still offered by AuthenTec.

The sell-off of non-essential parts of AuthenTec’s business today probably helps Apple accomplish a couple of things. If the initial Reuters report of the acquisition remains accurate (and it should, according to government records), it recoups investment on parts of the business which aren’t essential to Apple’s plans. It also ensures that once any deal is finalized, there will be less to worry about in terms of Apple gaining undue control over tech essential to the securing of its competitors products, which might raise red flags with regulators. As with most of Apple’s acquisitions, both reported and confirmed, it may be a while before we see this one bear fruit in terms of products, but it’s definitely something worth watching considering its potential impact on the future of the mobile payments scene.

Just a few days ago, we reported on a leaked update to the Google Wallet app that showed off the service’s rumored physical cards. If that wasn’t enough to convince you that it’s real, Google‘s own support site talks about the “Google Wallet card” right out there in the open. So while it’s not officially announced yet, this thing has to be real.

Google’s own Help section of its Google Wallet website refers to the Google Wallet card not once, but twice. If you click on “Eligible Devices” on the left-hand sidebar, you’ll see the mention of the Google Wallet Card. The company notes that all Android devices running Android 2.3.3 or higher are able to download the Google Wallet app for use with the Google Wallet card.

It seems Google thinks that while mobile payments are the way of the future, some people still may prefer using plastic. Thanks to last week’s Google Wallet app update leak, the Google Wallet card is said to be a card that replaces your real credit or debit cards, and you can assign the card to any one of your credit cards at any time.

Of course, we’re still not sure when Google will releases these things to the public, but we have to say that we can’t wait. And since you don’t need your actual phone to pay for things through Google Wallet, since you’ll now have a physical card, we’re wondering if Google will release a Google Wallet app for iOS at some point.

[via TechCrunch]

Google Wallet Card confirmed on Google support page is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google Wallet hasn’t had much uptake in the real world. When most of its use has revolved around one carrier, few payment points and even fewer phones, most of us have had to sit on the sidelines. If an Android Police source really did come across a leaked future build of Google Wallet as he claims, though, we may know how Google surmounts that problem: going old school with a real-world card. Screenshots in the app supposedly show a mail-in option for plastic that could completely replace credit and debit cards without turning to NFC. Any charges after a typical swipe of the magnetic strip would simply go to whatever payment source is set as Wallet’s default, letting minimalists slim down their actual wallets while sharing in the same discounts as their phone-wielding counterparts. Digital-only purists would still get something out of the deal, as the update could also bring person-to-person money transfers and support for mass transit cards. How soon the as yet unconfirmed app would appear is still a mystery, but it dovetails with Google teasing a Wallet revamp that’s rumored to take mobile use beyond its Android-only roots; we just didn’t anticipate that the company might bypass our phones altogether.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Google

Google Wallet update purportedly leaks plans for a real-world card, transfers and transit passes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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