4 ms·

Sans-hardware (not supported until 3.0), there are a lot of apps for the iPhone that do credit card processing, including the one that's on Apple TV ad right no

Sans-hardware (not supported until 3.0), there are a lot of apps for the iPhone that do credit card processing, including the one that's on Apple TV ad right now: http://innerfence.com http://innerfence.com

asimone 17y ago
I have to imagine that Dorsey knows this which makes me wonder if he has something up his sleeve, unless he thinks that his reputation in the business will help carry the project. This is, after all, the tech industry; we shouldn't underestimate the viral.
- jfarmer 17y ago
  Isn't a credit card app basically B2B? I don't see how a reputation in consumer internet is going to help. I think he has something more up his sleeve.
oldgregg 17y ago
As someone who has spent countless hours looking for a good wireless point of sale system this is going to be huge. Small retailers will snap this up and avoid the evil merchant companies. All of the inventory management and reporting lives in the cloud. Right now, besides opentable, all of the POS stuff is either really expensive or garbage. The only comparable thing right now is a Symbol MC70 with Windows Mobile and an external swiper. Apple retail uses them and they are $3k+ a pop. You can get some knock of Pidion 1300s for $1200. All the software is "enterprise" garbage. This device will be given away at cost. Pair it with an ipod touch and small business climb on board in mass. A whole new slew of small business, babysitters, and freelancers will accept credit cards. They cleanup in merchant fees at the very least, and quite possibly create the holy grail of mobile-to-mobile payments -- all nicely integrated into twitter.
- patio11 17y ago
  freelancers will accept credit cards. Most freelancers I work with (granted: high tech folks, generally) already do. Paypal, how I love you, let me count the ways... Speaking of which: if you want to be extra special nice to your favorite freelancer, pay them through Paypal's batch interface. It reduces the cost to receive the money from essentially 2.9% of the transaction to a flat fee of $1. When you're settling up $2000 invoices, that means a significant amount of money in their pocket rather than Paypal's. All it takes is for you to write a one-line text file and click a button on Paypal. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-overview-outside https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-ove...
rdouble 17y ago
I actually just spent a fair amount of time researching iPhone credit card processing for a client. Innerfence's product is definitely the best of the bunch. However, all of the card processing apps on the app store , including Innerfence's, just talk to the Authorize.net payment system. Another one also supports paypal in addition to authorize.net. As someone who has built both iPhone apps and built apps which use authorize.net for payment processing, I'll say that this isn't trivial, but it certainly isn't a huge challenge if you know what you are doing. Thus, I can't help but think there must be something else to Dorsey's idea.

asimone 17y ago

I have to imagine that Dorsey knows this which makes me wonder if he has something up his sleeve, unless he thinks that his reputation in the business will help carry the project. This is, after all, the tech industry; we shouldn't underestimate the viral.

jfarmer 17y ago
Isn't a credit card app basically B2B? I don't see how a reputation in consumer internet is going to help. I think he has something more up his sleeve.

oldgregg 17y ago

As someone who has spent countless hours looking for a good wireless point of sale system this is going to be huge. Small retailers will snap this up and avoid the evil merchant companies. All of the inventory management and reporting lives in the cloud. Right now, besides opentable, all of the POS stuff is either really expensive or garbage. The only comparable thing right now is a Symbol MC70 with Windows Mobile and an external swiper. Apple retail uses them and they are $3k+ a pop. You can get some knock of Pidion 1300s for $1200. All the software is "enterprise" garbage. This device will be given away at cost. Pair it with an ipod touch and small business climb on board in mass. A whole new slew of small business, babysitters, and freelancers will accept credit cards. They cleanup in merchant fees at the very least, and quite possibly create the holy grail of mobile-to-mobile payments -- all nicely integrated into twitter.

patio11 17y ago
freelancers will accept credit cards. Most freelancers I work with (granted: high tech folks, generally) already do. Paypal, how I love you, let me count the ways... Speaking of which: if you want to be extra special nice to your favorite freelancer, pay them through Paypal's batch interface. It reduces the cost to receive the money from essentially 2.9% of the transaction to a flat fee of $1. When you're settling up $2000 invoices, that means a significant amount of money in their pocket rather than Paypal's. All it takes is for you to write a one-line text file and click a button on Paypal. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-overview-outside https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-ove...

rdouble 17y ago

I actually just spent a fair amount of time researching iPhone credit card processing for a client. Innerfence's product is definitely the best of the bunch. However, all of the card processing apps on the app store , including Innerfence's, just talk to the Authorize.net payment system. Another one also supports paypal in addition to authorize.net. As someone who has built both iPhone apps and built apps which use authorize.net for payment processing, I'll say that this isn't trivial, but it certainly isn't a huge challenge if you know what you are doing. Thus, I can't help but think there must be something else to Dorsey's idea.