SumUp, one of the many European mobile card reader startups targeting small businesses — and taking advantage of Square’s continued absence to acquire users and build out a business — has taken another step designed to expand its reach by announcing a partnership with Revel Systems, a maker of iPad POS software.
Make way for one more player in the European mobile payments space, and a big one at that. Today, the online payments giant PayPal announced that from this summer it will be rolling out PayPal Here in the UK, its first foray into the European market, equipped with a new piece of hardware to accomodate the chip-based cards prevalent in this part of the world.
Editor’s Note: Vanessa Clark is the co-founder of Mobiflock, a mobile safety and security company offering parental control services for smartphones and tablets. She is involved in the mobile industry in Africa.
Zimbabwean Tawanda Kembo, 25, has been employed for more than two years but still doesn’t qualify for a credit card. This is the result of banking restrictions on issuing credit cards, he says, and around 70 percent of his fellow Zimbabweans are in the same boat. This is not unusual across the entire African continent, which has a similar unbanked or underbanked rate, according to the World Bank.
Square has Starbucks and now Square-clone Payleven, which is backed by Germany’s Rocket Internet incubator/investor, has signed up Berlin taxi association — Taxiverband Berlin (TVB) — to trial its Chip and PIN payment dongle. Payleven also makes a smaller magnetic swipe dongle for taking mobile payments but taxi drivers have opted to kick the tyres of the Chip and PIN system.
While the US wireless industry seems far away from finding a universal mobile payment system, T-Mobile’s new BFF MetroPCS appears to have made its choice. Taking to its official Facebook page, the carrier announced on Monday that the Samsung Galaxy S…
Most stores accepting mobile payments usually have to take just one format, whether it’s Google Wallet, Square or another flavor that you probably can’t use. LevelUp is convinced you shouldn’t have to choose platforms: it just revealed a new payment …
As promised earlier this summer, the Accel-backed payments platform Braintree is opening up its doors to non-U.S. merchants for the first time, with the launch of its service across Europe and in Canada. As of today, merchants in 27 countries can access the company’s payment gateway, recurring billing, and vault credit card storage features. They will also be able to accept payments in over 130 different currencies, the company says.
There’s little doubt that mobile payments hold a ton of potential for the future of commerce, but without proper direction (and willingness for adoption), the technology remains little more than an impractical curiosity for the majority of consumers….