Verifone Set To Launch Square Competitor

Square and Paypal are both vying for the mobile payment space, but there's about to be a third competitor: Verifone. Business Insider reports that Verifone is set to announce its own mobile payment hardware tomorrow. Dubbed the SAIL, it will plug into the 3.5mm headphone jack of the iPhone and allow individuals and small businesses to take credit card payments on the phone.

Square has been leading the mobile payment market for a while, but Verifone has a large customer base and reputable brand to leverage going forward. The features of the SAIL will be extremely similar to Square, but with a few differences. Transactions will have the same 2.7% fee, but Verifone will offer a lower 1.95% rate to those willing to pay $9.95 a month.

The iPhone dongle is a good starting point for small businesses, but as they expand Verifone will offer additional services as they scale, presumably meaning more professional and established point-of-sale devices. The Verifone SAIL app will also feature barcode scanning to give businesses more flexibility, and an online portal will be offered to keep track of payments and inventory.

Finally, Verifone will open up the service to third-party developers, so they could build payment processing right into their apps. As Business Insider points out, Verifone doesn't care where payments come from, just as long as it's processing them.