PhoneSwipe Gives Small Business A New Point-Of-Sale Option

One thing’s for sure, for those out there with small businesses that involve dealing with payment directly, taking those payments can be difficult. PhoneSwipe is looking to join the mobile point-of-sale revolution with their own mobile payment option.

PhoneSwipe, a free app available not only for iPhone 5 users (it’s even been specifically optimized for iPhone 5), but also for iPad users and Android users as well, provides users with a quick way to take credit card payments from a smartphone or tablet. As is generally the case, the app is free, and also offers an additional dongle, which must be requested from the company. When the card reader dongle arrives, it can then be plugged into the device to perform the transactions available to it.

PhoneSwipe charges a percentage fee based on the amount processed: 2.69 percent for swiped credit cards, and 3.49 percent of keyed-in purchases. You’ll also be able to take and track cash payments, get a tax rate applied automatically based on location–the app actually knows how much to charge in sales tax based on your location–as well as being able to not only apply discounts to individual purchases and allow customers to tip. You can email or print receipts with the right printer, and you can even view transaction reports to better track your business.

If you do a lot of business on the road, or at trade shows and the like, or you just want a simple way to add credit card functionality to a brick and mortar operation, a service like PhoneSwipe will do the job nicely. The only down side here is that there are a lot of credit card processing companies out there. Like a lot of a lot. With major names like Square and PayPal and the like already in play, it’s kind of hard to recommend PhoneSwipe. But by like token, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to make it not a good recommendation; the app appears sound enough and the rates are at least within striking distance of the competition. But without much to distinguish it or big savings, it may not be worth the download in favor of the larger, more established competitors.

PhoneSwipe is a sound and well put together app, but it’s got a lot of competition, and may well be lost in the shuffle of other major payment processors.

Related keywords:iPhone 5, payment processor, cloud-based telephony, point of sale