A few months ago we talked about Square, an iPhone payment system / card reader that got a lot of media buzz because 1. damnn, really?!?! this is hugeeeee 2. the man behind the project is Jack Dorsey, co-creator of Twitter. But until we see something from Jack, seems that Mophie – a popular retailer of Apple iPhone and iPod accessories – will present their credit card reader case at CES 2010.
The new product will be brilliantly-named “Credit Card reader” — and complimentary processing application. This will allow merchants to accept credit card payments by swiping the card through a special iPhone case. While details around the device add-on are slim, interest is already high.
The buzz building around Mophie, the palpable excitement and interest stimulated by Square, and an increasingly competitive mobile payment system market means that 2010 will be the year that consumers will buy and sell from their mobile phones.
Seems that , while others were creating buzz about their revolutionary iPhone card reader ” thingy ” , Mophie was quite as a mouse and now they hit the market with the first tangible product ever. That doesn’t mean it will be the best or be the only one of its kind. Mophie will have a lot of competition in the coming months.
2010 – This year your iPhone will be a credit card reader
Square
As we said above, this is a Twitter-flavored product. The company has currently only developed software for the iPhone, but that’s expected to change in the coming months. Square also plans to give their square-shapped reader away for free, charge a minimal fee for the app, and support customer loyalty programs.
Mophie
The details around Mophie’s Credit Card Reader are minimal at the moment, but their hardware appears to be an iPhone-only shell similar in style to the Juice Pack Air (which retails for $79.95). We can safely assume then that Mophie’s hardware solution will be a much pricier alternative to Square. As for what the software component will look like or cost, we can only speculate at this point.
VeriFone / PAYware
Another big player in the space this year will be VeriFone. The company has their only mobile credit card processing system called PAYware Mobile and it’s also one part hardware, one part software application.The first iteration of PAYware Mobile is for iPhone and iPod Touch (with versions being developed for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Android)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Lm8Nw8S7U
[via Mashable]