Ukraine’s PrivatBank Launches mPOS Card Scanner for Small Business (July 8, 2013)
July 8, 2013
PrivatBank, a Ukraine-based financial institution, has launched a contactless mobile POS offering that enables small businesses to accept card payments by scanning the card using a smartphone and its iPay application. The mPOS service is available to corporate and private customers in Ukraine and Russia, according to PrivatBank, which says it is the first Eurasian financial institution to offer optical character-recognition technology.
More common among mPOS providers is the card reader that attaches to mobile phones or tablets, and a flurry of companies have launched such products in the past 18 months. Though San Francisco-based Square was one of the first companies to offer a device in the U.S., others quickly followed, including Fiserv Inc.; Groupon Inc.; PayPal Inc.; Rêv Worldwide; Intuit Inc.; U.K.-based mPowa and O2; Stockholm-based iZettle and startups payworks, payleven and SumUp. And, Citi launched a mobile card reader in India earlier this year.
The ability to accept card payments with a mobile device could prove lucrative for small Ukrainian businesses. A recent MasterCard survey of consumers in Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, U.K., France, Poland and Ukraine indicates that 91 percent of them carry their payment cards while on holiday versus 60 percent at home.
