The company that brought you well-known accounting software like Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax is ramping up its efforts in the rapidly expanding business of mobile payments.
According to Fortune magazine, Intuit is taking the freemium route with its nearly two-year-old GoPayment service in an effort to challenge Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s Square in the emerging market of mobile payments.
GoPayment is a mobile payment platform optimized for small businesses not yet equipped to accept credit card payments via tradition cash register or other electronic payment terminals.
Small businesses that sign up for GoPayment by mid-February will receive the service with no monthly fee attached. Additionally, they will receive a GoPayment credit card reader for free. It is compatible with numerous leading smartphones, including iPhone, Blackberry, and Android devices.
According to Intuit, small businesses have already processed $80 million in transactions using GoPayment.
Among the promoted attributes of Intuit’s mobile payment system are:
- No arbitrary transaction caps that delay business owners from receiving their money
- 24/7/365 live customer support
- Syncs with QuickBooks to reduce manual data entry and ensure that books are up to date
- Provides double encryption to protect credit card data
- Offers itemized sales receipts that small businesses can text or email to customers
- Offers ability to apply sales tax to transactions
Fortune has learned that Intuit plans an aggressive promotional push for GoPayment, which will include broadcast and online commercial advertising beginning this week.
“This will attract the smaller businesses that couldn’t take credit card payments before or are taking them but not getting enough value,” says Chris Hylen, general manager of Intuit’s payment solutions division. “It’s for people who are on the fence because they don’t want to pay a monthly minimum.”
