Paypal has announced a new service called “Paypal Here” which is basically the same as the Square Up service. It’s not available yet but soon, small business owners will be able to accept credit cards for payment to their Paypal account simply by swiping the customers credit card.
Paypal will provide a free encrypted card reader that will allow the credit card information to be read by your iPhone or Android device. Notice that the card reader is encrypted. Since there was a lot of talk about the problem with the unencrypted reader from Square Up, I’m sure Paypal will make a big deal about it when it comes out.
Other than the transaction fee being very slightly less for Paypal, they also have a feature in their app that will allow the user to take a picture of the credit card. The app will also allow the user to create a menu of choices to choose items from, like shopping on a website and paying the shopping cart at the end.
Since Paypal is owned by the powerful eBay.com, Square Up will be looking at some very serious competition. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to justify why somebody would use Square Up when they could use the Paypal Here.