Chase Joins mPOS Race (Aug. 13, 2013)
Aug. 13, 2013
Chase today jumped into the mPOS race, offering a free mobile card reader for small business customers that has a few frills but a somewhat more traditional pricing plan, according to an announcement from Chase Paymentech, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s acquiring and processing subsidiary. Like Square, which galvanized the mobile payments market in 2010 and spawned many imitators, the new Chase Checkout suite of services provides mobile merchants with a free dongle that plugs into an iPhone or Android handset. Chase’s mobile checkout app also enables merchants to create a catalog of product descriptions and images to help manage their sales and inventory, and the ability to send receipts to customers via e-mail or text. But unlike Square and many of the more recent mPOS arrivals, including PayPal Inc.’s PayPal here and Fiserv Inc.’s SpotPay, which typically charge a flat transaction-processing rate, Chase also charges a monthly fee to mobile merchants.
Merchants opting for Chase’s new mobile checkout service pay a $9.95 monthly fee plus an average transaction-processing rate of 1.99 percent plus 25 cents per transaction, Chase said. Square and others in the mPOS arena tout simplicity and a streamlined pricing structure by charging no monthly fee, typically offering merchants a flat rate of 2.75 percent of the transaction. Chase’s pricing strategy, which includes a $25 minimum in monthly transactions, is geared to suit “more established” merchants rather than micro businesses that may only process occasional transactions, a Chase Paymentech spokesperson tells Paybefore.
Competition among mPOS startups has quickly intensified over the last few years, with new offerings sweeping across Europe and now Latin America.
