Verizon swiping credit cards with new Intuit hardware

Verizon Wireless already plans to allow its customers to make credit card payments with their phones. Now it’s allowing customers to accept credit cards from their phones as well. Today, VZW announced it will start selling Intuit’s mobile card swiping and processing technology in Verizon stores, targeting small businesses looking to add credit transactions to their mobile commerce arsenal.

The solution is very similar to that offered by Square, which sells its card reader and distributes its app for Apple and Android smartphones independently. But Intuit and Verizon have added a few tweaks to the GoPayment platform to distinguish it from the competition. Intuit is a financial software firm and is integrating its application with the latest versions of its QuickBooks accounting software for the PC, Mac and cloud. While Square offers a single discount rate (processing fee) of 2.75% for all transactions, Intuit is offering a subscription service for $13 a month per reader with a 1.7% discount reader. Businesses that don’t subscribe pay a 2.7% rate.

Android, iPhone and BlackBerry smartphone customers will have to subscribe to a Verizon voice and data plans, but the application also works with Android tablets and iPads, requiring only a data subscription. The reader plugs into the device’s headphone jack, while the GoPayment application can be downloaded from the different platform’s app stores.

Verizon has been one of the most aggressive operators to embrace mobile payments. It has partnered with American Express for a mobile payments app called Serve (Unfiltered: Verizon, like Sprint, to Serve up AMEX’s mobile payment app). The operator is also working with Payfone to implement a one-click online payment service for transactions initiated from Verizon smartphones and tablets (CP: Verizon venture with Payfone and AMEX speeds ahead of Isis NFC plans). Though Verizon isn’t involved with the most high-profile mobile payments service, Google’s near-field communications (NFC)-powered wallet (CP: Google Wallet: A mobile operator’s friend or foe?), it is working with T-Mobile, AT&T and Discover Financial Services on a carrier NFC payment service called Isis, though the network has scaled back considerably (Unfiltered: Despite operators mobile billing advantage, Isis scales back mobile payment ambitions).

The Intuit application isn’t a consumer mobile payment service, but it is another step in turning the smartphone into a financial instrument.