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It won’t be long until payment card acceptance applications and card readers for smart phones are as easy to get in stores as cornflakes or socks. The latest example: Intuit Inc. and Verizon Wireless on Thursday announced that Intuit’s GoPayment mobile application and reader are now available in Verizon Wireless’s 2,300 U.S. stores.
GoPayment’s major distribution channels had been the merchant-acquiring subsidiary of Intuit, which makes the QuickBooks software program for small businesses, and online application sites. The Verizon Wireless deal gets GoPayment directly in front of business owners and would-be entrepreneurs who visit the carrier’s stores and want to accept credit and debit cards while out of the office or shop.
“This is really a breakthrough partnership for us,” Andrew Morbitzer, director of business development in Mountain View, Calif.-based Intuit’s Payment Solutions division, tells Digital Transactions News.
Basking Ridge, N.J.-based Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Britain’s Vodafone Group plc, has more retail cell-phone subscribers than any U.S. carrier, some 89.7 million. According to Morbitzer, customers are asking about payment services through their carriers. “They want to be able go into a store and see someone,” he says.
And as carriers seek to sell more services to small businesses, they’re increasingly seeing the value of offering payment applications with smart phones, according to mobile-payments consultant Todd Ablowitz, president of Centennial, Colo.-based Double Diamond Group. “Clearly what this says more than anything else is that carriers that can reach merchants and casual merchants are recognizing the value of payment acceptance,” he says.
“Payments and transactions are often the biggest hurdle businesses face,” Mike Schaefer, executive director of the Business Solutions Group for Verizon Wireless, said in a news release. “Our value proposition is to streamline, simplify, and enable business owners to get paid with minimal delay.”
The Intuit-Verizon Wireless deal adds to the number of mobile-payments services now available in stores. Square Inc.’s system, which includes a card reader, can be purchased at Apple Inc.’s retail locations, which also sell VeriFone Systems Inc.’s PAYware Mobile. (Best Buy Co. Inc.’s Web site sells the VeriFone system too.) AT&T Inc., the No. 2 wireless carrier, last month began selling Apriva Inc.’s AprivaPay system in its stores. AprivaPay’s reader is not on the shelves, but AT&T sales people have it shipped to the business owner’s home or store after taking the order, says Paul Coppinger, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Apriva’s president.
GoPayment runs on Android, Apple, and BlackBerry smart phones. Apple’s Web site sells a reader for the service from mophie Marketplace, a product that had been available for a time in Apple’s retail stores but is no longer carried there. Intuit didn’t say what happened to that arrangement.
While Apple’s stores are extremely busy, GoPayment gets 10 times the number of locations with Verizon Wireless, a potential advantage as it competes with other smart-phone payments providers, especially Square, for transactions from small merchants. Verizon Wireless customers can get the GoPayment card reader free with activation of a GoPayment merchant account from Intuit and a mail-in rebate for the $29.97 purchase price.
The GoPayment app is free; the basic service has a 2.7% discount rate for swiped transactions and no monthly, transaction, or cancellation fees. A second pricing plan has a $12.95 monthly fee with a 1.7% discount rate for swiped transactions. Intuit is offering Verizon Wireless customers two months of free service with that plan.
It’s possible Intuit may seek deals with other carriers for GoPayment distribution. “We’re definitely interested in strategic partnerships,” says Morbitzer.
