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Loop turns almost any point-of-sale system into a mobile payment machine (hands-on)
In a small shop on University Avenue in Palo Alto, mobile payments vet Will Graylin proudly points out the point-of-sale (POS) system sitting next to the register. "This is a 13-year-old Hypercom," Will explains, emphasizing its age and the lack of modern mobile payment options. Then, he does something we haven't seen before: he puts his iPhone next to the mag-stripe reader, taps a button on his screen and the transaction gets processed as if he'd physically swiped his card. Companies like Google, Isis and MasterCard (among others) are competing with each other to see who can establish an NFC-based mobile payments standard and build a strong enough ecosystem to support it, but Will -- along with co-founder George Wallner -- is approaching the highly competitive and nascent smartphone commerce market from an entirely new direction. The duo's new company, known as Loop, is debuting a new platform that will let you use your phone to make payments on nearly 90 percent of all POS systems in the country, even if they don't have any tech embedded inside that's capable of accepting contactless payments. Continue with us below to see a hands-on gallery and a deeper explanation of what exactly makes this possible.
