The Green Sheet Online Edition
January 1, 2010 • 10:01:02
Flexibility with a mobile terminal
A Southern California-based company called Simply Swipe It LLC has joined the party in a suddenly robust field of payment acceptance terminals that retrofit to existing cell phones.
On the heels of last month's releases of Square, from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and PAYware Mobile, from terminal manufacturer Verifone Inc. comes Swipe It from Simply Swipe It.
Swipe It is a software-based payment terminal for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch that the company touts as "ISO agnostic." The software is being marketed in conjunction with a payment card swipe device called QuickSwipe, from Apple and PCaccessory provider Macally.
"There are thousands of processors and ISOs out there, and it doesn't make sense for there to be 1,000 applications," said Braden Harris, Vice President of Sales for Simply Swipe It. "So we thought, 'why don't we be the application that is sort of ISO agnostic, so any old company in America, and, eventually, around the world, can use Swipe It and QuickSwipe as their application and platform and maintain their relationship with all their merchants.'"
Harris added that "We want to create a reseller or partner program such that all the other ISOs who don't currently have an application will use ours." He noted that ISOs who sell Swipe It have the option of branding the software with their own name.
Harris said Swipe It and companion product QuickSwipe provide a degree of flexibility that gives them wide appeal. For one, QuickSwipe works with any model of iPhone or iPod touch and is designed to eventually integrate with BlackBerry and Android phones as well. Harris said doing so will require only designing a different connecting jack.
Layered security
He noted that Swipe It, which supports both Internet and in-person merchant accounts, also accommodates various levels of security, depending on a processor's preference.
The program connects to the Address Verification Service (AVS), giving product users the option of using address information (like ZIP code) to verify transactions.
"Processors have different risks they're willing to take on," Harris said. "We can program the system so that AVS ... is always required, even for a swipe transaction. If they've decided they want real high level security, then if [address information] doesn't match, the transaction won't go through.
"Other people have a bit lower security: they won't even ask for the ZIP, or may ask and if the setting says the zip is wrong it still processes. So we can customize the settings to meet the processor's profile."
Harris said Swipe It can send e-mail receipts to buyers, and that transactions can be authenticated with a fingerprint signature on the iPhone Touch.
Immediate encryption
The QuickSwipe device, meanwhile, is fortified with MagTek Inc.'s MagneSafe card reader, which encrypts consumer card information at the point of swipe. While noting the security benefits of using QuickSwipe, Harris also said that merchants (including those who do in-person sales) can use Swipe It without a card reader by manually entering consumer card information.
Harris added: "One thing that's cool about [the card reader] is, let's say you're at a tradeshow and you're deep down in the concrete basement and don't have an Internet connection.
As a merchant, you can swipe a transaction and encrypt that and then not until you get an Internet connection will the transaction process ... but the data is secured until then."
Simply Swipe It LLC
888-717-9473
www.simplyswipeit.com
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