Wireless Merchant Services is continuing to evolve at the fastest pace of any period in merchant services history.
On March 26th, ABC News broke a news story about how PayPal is breaking into the mobile merchant services industry with PayPal Here. PayPal Here empowers small merchants and independent businesses to accept credit cards on their phones – anywhere they can get a wireless signal.
“The mobile phone has revolutionized the way we shop,” PayPal’s director of communications Anuj Nayar told ABC News. “If you are making a purchase from your mobile phone in store, what sort of purchase is that? Is it an online purchase? The reality is it is all about multichannel retail.”
The solution is built around a small triangle-shaped piece of hardware, that plugs right into the iPhone’s headphone jack. The seller can swipe a credit card right along the top of the hardware, and then process the transaction in a wireless manner – fully encrypted – through PayPal.
The cost of this is pretty high compared to traditional mobile merchant services solutions. The merchant is required to pay PayPal a flat rate of 2.7% of every transaction. This is quite high compared to rates averaging abouut 2.25% elsewhere.
