This mobile transactions battle between Square, Intuit, and VeriFone is heating up! Looks as if Intuit just raised the stakes with the demonstration of its GoPayment mobile credit card processing application sporting new NFC (Near-Field Communication) technology that could set it apart from competitors in the market.
The current GoPayment system consists of a credit card reader that you plug into your smartphone’s headphone jack to swipe a customer’s credit card to complete a sale. Square and Verifone both have similar devices that you have to physically add to your phone for credit card swiping functionality.
Intuit’s GoPayment demonstration at this year’s Google I/O Conference shows NFC technology bring used to transfer credit card data via radio waves, eliminating the need for the actual card or any add-on card reader hardware. During a transaction, a user simply holds their smartphone (with their financial information stored on an accompanying mobile app) near a Point-of-Sale (POS) device or another smartphone that will read your credit card information and complete the sale. Thus making it easier and faster for customers to pay, and simpler for small business owners to get paid.
Innovation is happening rapidly in the mobile payment space and we want to be ready to help the millions of small businesses and consumers we serve benefit from the latest technology.
The mobile tech industry has been investing in the creation/evolution of the virtual wallet for quite sometime. Intuit, with this recent show of support in NFC and mobile credit card transactions, may have just fast-tracked itself to the front of the race. Look out for more mobile device manufacturers to start pumping out NFC-enabled gadgets like the Google Nexus S currently on the market (and what Intuit used for its demo) that can support this technology towards the end of 2011 and well into 2012.
[via: Business Wire]