Groupon Testing Merchant Payment System 57
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by
Soulskill
from the exploiting-their-reach dept.
from the exploiting-their-reach dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that Groupon is testing out a service for letting merchants accept credit cards that could put it into competition with PayPal and Square. "Groupon's nascent payment service comes with an Apple iPod Touch, and a case that wraps around the back of the device, which allows merchants to swipe credit cards." The fee structure isn't finalized, but their aim is to be competitive with PayPal and Square. "Groupon may have flexibility to charge lower fees because it could subsidize the payments service from money it makes providing other services to merchants, they said. PayPal's service, known as PayPal Here, charges a fee of 2.7 percent of the purchase price for all types of credit and debit cards - including those issued by American Express Co.. Transaction fees for processing AmEx cards are often higher. Square charges 2.75 percent per swipe. Groupon's test service is charging a 1.8 percent transaction fee and 15 cents per transaction, Rocky Agrawal, an industry analyst, reported in a VentureBeat blog late Thursday."
credit card with iDevices (Score:5, Interesting)
Sticking with the subject of attaching a credit card reader to an Apple device, there's a business in my city that uses an iPad with a credit card reader on it to do their transactions. Pretty slick considering point of sale (POS) systems used to run for $1.5k-$2k each.
But then on one busy day I saw the cashier constantly swapping the charger and credit card reader in and out because there's only one slot on an iPad. So clearly there's a drawback with that system.
Seems like the natural upgrade is to just have a tablet that can be on a charger AND support a credit/debit card reader at the same time. Bingo, cheap touch screen POS system. Is there one out there that already does this?
Re:OMIGOD (Score:5, Interesting)
Abuse of a monopoly is bad
If history teaches one thing that is abuse of monopoly is inevitable.
Re:Paypal? More like Lame, pal! (Score:2, Interesting)
On the flip side with credit cards there are charge-backs. But if you're not an online merchant I think the charge-back and fraud rates aren't that high.