Mobile Payment Solutions: Are they Right for Small Businesses?

One other potential benefit, regardless of type of business: In the unlikely event of an electrical brownout or blackout, mobile cellular systems usually continue to work. This would allow mobile devices that are still charged to continue to accept payments, while most other systems would be down.

Note that on the following pricing chart, there is usually a higher transaction fee (up to 1% more) when manually entering a credit card instead of swiping it, and an additional transaction fee may apply.

Current Pricing for No-Contract Versions of Popular Mobile Payment Solutions

Intuit GoPayment (www.gopayment.com)
Swipe Fee: 2.75%
Transaction Fee: $0
Card Reader: Free
Minimums: None

Square (www.squareup.com)
Swipe Fee: 2.75%
Transaction Fee: $0
Card Reader: Free
Minimums: None

PayAnywhere (www.payanywhere.com)
Swipe Fee: 2.69%
Transaction Fee: $0
Card Reader: Free
Minimums: None

Other Systems
Businesses using Sage Software’s (na.sage.com/sage-payment-solutions) payment solutions can add a free mobile payment system for phones and tablets that has no additional processing fees over the cost of their payment solution.

PayPal (www.paypal.com) has recently added mobile payment acceptance to its business offerings, at a similar rate of 2.7% per transaction, along with check acceptance and email invoicing. Other complete details (such as keyed transaction rates) were not available. LevelUp (www.thelevelup.com) has a completely different approach, offering a 0% transaction fee, but using an ad campaign model that helps drive customers to the retailer, for a fee.

Google Wallet, which can store personal credit card and account information, is making its debut at retailers across the country, but is geared toward mobile customers, not mobile businesses. Most of the nation’s largest banks have also developed their own systems, but they have not yet attained a broad reach.