AT&T uses Apriva to turn smartphones into point-of-sale devices

AT&T (NYSE:T) is moving point-of-sale mobile applications out of the vertical markets and onto the smartphone, today announcing a partnership with wireless payment company Apriva to support credit and debit card transactions over off-the-shelf handsets. The move is part of AT&T’s growing effort to target mobile data services at the millions of small businesses that lie between its large enterprise and consumer customer bases.

AT&T will offer AprivaPay services in two versions: a simpler browser-based service customers can use to manually enter payment information and access Apriva’s secure transaction network and a full-fledged Windows Mobile app called AprivaPay Professional, which brings the transaction software to the handset and supports the coupling of peripherals such as a magnetic strip reader and printer.

Michael Antieri, president of advanced enterprise services for AT&T, said that the service will allow small businesses to create virtual storefronts while in the field rather than rely on later billing or processing checks. “Sales increase when small businesses accept payment cards,” Antieri said in a statement. “And given that an overwhelming majority of small businesses use smartphones, offering a mobile application that ties together payment cards and smartphones makes perfect sense.”

Point-of-sale applications are no stranger to the mobile industry. Mobile payment processing devices such as those manufactured by Motorola’s (NYSE:MOT) Symbol Technologies are nearly ubiquitous, but the increasing power of smartphones has made them a viable alternative to dedicated vertical market devices. Since verification and the transactions themselves are performed in the cloud, the smartphone needs only a secure connection and the appropriate software and hardware to handle the interaction between customer and business.

By leveraging their existing phones, small businesses and even single entrepreneurs can support a bare-bones mobile transaction system rather cheaply. AT&T is offering the browser-based service for $15 a month and the Windows Mobile native app service for $20 a month. Though the exclusivity of the professional service to Windows smartphones might be limiting to many small businesses, Apriva has said it plans to release the app this year on the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android and Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) platforms, making it available to every major U.S. smartphone platform except Palm’s (NASDAQ:PALM) WebOS.