Eftpos gets Square as battle for mobile payments escalates

Mobile tradies and small businesses seeking to bypass steep credit card fees extracted by bank-owned payments terminals have scored a significant victory, with challenger payments provider Square revealing it has now ported eftpos functionality to its Australian machines.

Made official on Monday, the tie-up between Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s global payments play Australia’s 30-something electronic payments scheme opens the door for millions of people holding everyday bank payment cards fitted with contactless functionality to avoid the dreaded Amex.

While it might seem like an incremental retrofit, the realpolitik of the eftpos-Squarer hook-up is actually way bigger.

It means an untapped army of smaller merchants – think dog washers, craft brewers, market stallers and school fetes – can now get payments functionality over the counter from Officeworks as opposed to signing-up to a bank’s merchant services contract and bypass credit cards.

Payments industry estimates put Square’s current terminal fleet at around 150,000 units in Australia, a number that has irked many merchant services providers because of its rapid growth over the last two years.

A big factor in the take-up has been the speed with which ABN holders can get up and running because the Square NFC reader, which plugs into a smartphone, has been sold over the counter at Bunnings and Officeworks.

It’s also a come-from-behind effort for eftpos which had lagged the pack in terms of NFC payments, a situation its managing director Stephen Benton is insistent has changed.

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Source: Eftpos gets Square as battle for mobile payments escalates – Finance – Hardware – Software – iTnews