VeriFone Payware Mobile iPhone peripheral looking ready to square off with, er, Square

Sure, it's not quite as elegant as a little cube jutting out of one corner of the iPhone à la Square, but it looks like the Payware Mobile could certainly double as a pretty sturdy case should it drop. More importantly, the backing of VeriFone means this mobile payment peripheral has some pretty important backing and should be able to hit the ground running. That magical date should be January 15th of next year, free on a 2-year Payware Connect contract, and pre-orders are now live on the website for those who want to join in on the phone. Just one word of advice: when you hand the iPhone over for someone to sign as proof of purchase, make sure you're able to outrun the chap. Just in case.

[Thanks, Jason]

[gadgetfaster Posted Dec 11th 2009 9:35AM]

If the person you're worried about committing fraud is the business owner, you're already screwed. Plenty of card swiping devices on integrated point of sale terminals in stores today are just keyboard wedges that can spew their reading of your card into any app they want (even if they are integrated into the point-of-sale form factor.) At least with a handheld terminal, you can see the swiping occur and keep the card in your vision at all times.

It's still an accepted payment practice to store card numbers (but not track data) unencrypted on a terminal for settling and resubmission. It's still standard practice at some events to take a carbon imprint of a card, pizza delivery guys do a rubbing onto the thermal receipt paper. This is really no worse than those.

Chip & PIN is nowhere near coming to fruition, all the hardware vendors are still trying to push RFID.

[gadgetfaster Posted Dec 11th 2009 9:54AM]

One thing to pay attention to for both Square and Verifone is the payment structure. Verifone is very eager to escape the commodity business of selling hardware and software and instead to grab a per-transaction fee in addition to the fees that are already charged by acquirers and processing companies.

This is of course everyone's dream. Ever walk into a store that says "We only accept credit card transactions above $x?" In my experience, it is likely that those stores are actually being overcharged by an unscrupulous processing broker. Some of these brokers act as a personal friend, providing the opportunity to take advantage of trust and loyalty.

[injustifiiable Posted Dec 14th 2009 8:57AM]

I doubt these things will be cheap enough for any joe-schmuck to buy...some of you are just worrying about nothing!