Currently, there's one company atop the mobile credit card processing world, but a popular online payment platform is looking to enter the game as well.
PayPal, the payment processing division owned by eBay, will soon announce plans to launch its own mobile credit card payment processing device to compete directly with industry leader Square, according to a report from Bloomberg News. But PayPal's plan to take down the competition involves focusing more on small businesses, by offering a lower processing fee than Square.Though the difference between PayPal's 2.7 percent transaction fee and Square's slightly larger 2.75 percent may seem marginal, over the course of a year, the savings can add up considerably for a small company with narrow margins.
This follows PayPal's earlier move into real-world payment processing when it partnered with the Home Depot, the report said. Now, shoppers at the hardware superstore can make purchases with their PayPal accounts at checkout.
"Everybody is thinking that everyone is going to pay for everything with their mobile phone," Sam Shrauger, vice president of product and experience at PayPal, recently told the news agency. "We don’t actually believe that that has to be the case. We think consumers are going to decide how they want to pay. And what's important is that they have a wallet - a digital wallet."
Experts are still relatively unsure of exactly how mobile credit card payments will gain popularity, but it is generally agreed upon that the industry will be worth tens of billions annually within the next few years as consumer acceptance of these payment methods becomes ubiquitous and the necessary technology becomes more readily available.
