As a small business owner, I’m delighted the field of mobile credit card processing is opening up. I compared Verifone’s Sail and Square’s services while processing payments for my business via my iPhone and iPad. Here’s what I found. Read more »
Intuit is taking a key step in its competition with Square and other payment rivals by integrating QuickBooks Point of Sale product with its GoPayment mobile payment product. That means that customers will have an easy way to combine a traditional POS experience with mobile payments. Read more »
Square, the breakout mobile payment hit, faces more competition from deep-pocketed competitors. But the company is content to craft its own commerce tools without opening up an API or striking big partnerships. Square’s COO Keith Rabois explains how it will win by going solo. Read more »
While VeriFone’s Square rival SAIL looks nothing like Square’s credit-card-swiping dongle, the company veered into flat-out imitation with its legal user agreement, which lifted much of its language directly from Square’s merchant user agreement. Read more »
Payment provider VeriFone is doubling down on the small and medium sized market with a new payment open platform called SAIL that will look to give merchants a more flexible tool for conducting transactions. SAIL also puts more big name pressure on Square. Read more »
The tablets and smartphones are continuing to disrupt many old businesses and at the same time creating new opportunities. Retail outlets and hospitality industry are next frontiers for these devices, as research from Motorola finds out. And that’s good news for Apple and Square amongst many. Read more »
With Square Inc.’s new open-source Cubism.js library, developers can devise complex timeline visualizations that tap into multiple data backends. Think Yahoo Finance stock charts only more dynamic and interactive. Cubism.js is available under the Apache license from Github. Read more »
Even with the threat of PayPal looming, Square is seeing no slow down. The company told Bloomberg Wednesday that its annualized rate of processed transactions is now up to $5 billion, up from $4 billion a month ago Read more »
Smartphone sales surged both in the U.S. and worldwide, carriers struggled to cope with the ever-increasing consumption of mobile data, and the fight for spectrum remained front and center in the first quarter. Our latest quarterly wrap-up analyzes these trends and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
German clone factory Rocket Internet, the incubator run by the controversy-courting Samwer brothers, has reportedly chosen its next target: white hot payment service Square. Read more »
Square snagged one of the founding engineers of Google Wallet, making people wonder if it was going to embrace NFC. My guess – not likely, for they believe that their app-based approach has lot less friction. With recent talent exodus, something is not right at Google Wallet. Read more »
While Square has been known for its credit card reading dongle, the company is showing even more attention to its payment app, which is being relaunched today as Pay with Square. The mobile wallet app holds the future for Square and its bid to remake payments. Read more »
PayPal Here, the payment giant’s new Square-like payment system, is a solid competitor but won’t take down Square immediately. But with PayPal’s assets and larger strategy to win over real-world payments, it’s got a shot to overtake its rivals. That is if it can execute. Read more »
As an active and enthusiastic Square merchant for my mobile business, I decided to compare notes with several other business owners who use iOS devices to ring up sales and manage their businesses. Here’s what I found. Read more »
Bloomberg is confirming our earlier report on PayPal’s plans to announce a Square-like mobile card reader. The new reader will be a blue triangle device designed by Yves Behar. And PayPal will charge a fee of 2.7 percent on transactions, undercutting Square. Read more »
PayPal’s plans to announce a solution for small businesses at an event this Thursday includes a mobile payment dongle that would compete against Square and others, according to sources we’ve talked to. The dongle will allow small business owners to process credit card swipes. Read more »
Square is giving small vendors the tools to make intelligent decisions with the same sort of inventory management and analytics data that larger competitors take for granted. And it has the potential to make an even greater impact than its payment processing piece has made. Read more »
Despite being known as Europe’s answer to Square, the payments service iZettle has only officially been available in Sweden since launching last year. Now that’s changing, with news of a rollout across Norway, Denmark and Finland, and the first step toward a British service too. Read more »
With new products from a variety of players like Google and Isis comes a potentially confusing year as the term “mobile wallet” gets thrown around repeatedly. What exactly is the “mobile wallet”? Here are some important definitions for those looking to make a move in the space. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
It’s an election year, which means politicians are frantically trying to raise money for their campaigns. President Obama’s re-election camp… Read more at paidContent »
Square, the mobile payment acceptance tool, has gotten a big endorsement from the merchant in chief. The Obama re-election campaign said today it is equipping staff, field organizers and volunteers with Square hardware to allow them to process campaign donations from their mobile phone. Read more »
Square, the high-profile mobile payments company started by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, has yet to launch outside the U.S. But in the meantime, a… Read more at paidContent »
Card.io last year introduced its “visual swipe” technology that allowed developers to accept credit card payments by taking a picture of a card. Now, the start-up is launching a new consumer payment app for iOS and Android that allows people to receive payments using Card.io’s technology. Read more »
Despite many challenges — from disappointing EV sales to the headaches in subsidizing solar — the cleantech sector survived 2011. Where is it headed next? It is clear that early-stage companies and ideas hold the keys to future growth, much like the first wave of Internet ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The past year in mobile has been even more eventful than most of us would have predicted. Our appetite for mobile data grew dramatically; Google’s Android continued its march to worldwide dominance; Amazon joined the tablet bandwagon; and AT&T tried and failed to acquire T-Mobile USA, among many other things. All of that activity lays the groundwork for a very promising — and very challenging — 2012. This research note serves both as a review of the major trends and events of 2011 as well as a forecast for the coming year. Companies mentioned in this report include Millennial Media, Quattro Wireless and Samsung. For a full list of companies, and to read the full research note, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mobile payment service Square has taken a stand against NFC touch technology in favor of its own card swipe and location-based services. But transatlantic rival iZettle says that it will remain agnostic as it tries to corner the European market. Read more »
Another election year is nearly upon us, and if the past is any lesson, new uses of technology will impact the outcome in many new and unpredictable ways. Read more »
Whether it’s mobile devices like Square’s payment system or products that monitor our health and wellness, one of the threads running through the recent GigaOM RoadMap conference was the idea that successful technology involves making the computer disappear, even as it becomes more powerful. Read more »
The GigaOM RoadMap conference on Nov. 10 gathered leaders and visionaries to discuss how, thanks to technological and generational shifts, society as a whole is becoming more connected — not only in the media we consume and the social networks we use but also in the way we interact with devices and manage our resources. This research note takes a look back on the event in order to analyze this new era of connectivity across various industries, from Jack Dorsey’s idea of becoming “more human,” not less, to the concept of “invisible technology” and data, the fuel of the new century. Companies mentioned in this report include Airbnb, Netflix and Twitter. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Square, the mobile payment acceptance tool, is getting a lot more useful for merchants with version 2.2 for iOS and Android. It brings loyalty rewards for Square Card Case users, hardware integration with cash drawers and receipt printers and more back-end tools. Read more »
The traditional ways that retailers and merchants reach out to users and how they expect them to discover, shop and pay are getting disrupted by mobile and social. And that’s created really empowered shoppers, who are using these tools to augment and alter their buying patterns. Read more »
Stockholm-based iZettle — a company that is building a payments system not entirely unlike the much-heralded Square — is taking a big step forwards today by coming out of beta. The system, which consists of a plug-in device and app, goes live today, with approval from […] Read more »
Thirty years after Steve Jobs and Bill Gates revolutionized personal computing, there’s a new generation of entrepreneurs focused on bringing people together. Folks like Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Crowley are leading the charge in changing the way people communicate andinteract with each other. Read more »
Connectedness was the theme of our first GigaOM RoadMap conference and we talked to smart speakers and attendees all day long. Here are the GigaOM and GigaOM Pro editorial teams’ highlights and key takeaways from yesterday’s events, plus some photos from the event. Read more »
In the super connected world in which we live now, people often lament about the downfall of old-fashioned face-to-face interaction. But according to Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and Square, technology done right can actually make us more human and empathetic, not less. Read more »
One of the hottest electric vehicles, Tesla’s second car the Model S, won’t be available until 2012, but you’ll have a chance to check out the Beta version of the Model S at GigaOM’s RoadMap event this Thursday, November 10th, in San Francisco. Read more »
Richard Branson is no stranger to investing in mobile media: among his more notable moves have been establishing *Virgin Mobile* years ago,… Read more at paidContent »
Intuit is pushing harder into the mobile payments market by building off its existing business ties. It just struck a deal to make it easy for AT&T small business customers to get started on GoPayment, and it’s trying to leverage its QuickBooks customers to compete in mobile payments. Read more »
We are still far from seeing simple, wave-and-pay NFC as a ubiquitous technology for mobile payments, and even further from seeing consumers… Read more at paidContent »
Square is making its Card Case wallet app hands-free, enabling users to walk into a store and pay without ever pulling out their smartphone. They just say their name and order. The company is showing it wants to perfect the entire buying process, not just payments. Read more »
