Electronic payments giant PayPal Inc. has acquired mobile-payments startup Fig Card Corp., PayPal said in a blog post Thursday.
Fig Card, based in Boston, lets merchants accept mobile payments with a USB device that plugs into a cash register. Customers would need a Fig app on their smartphones, but no hardware is required, according to Peter Chu, the senior director PayPal mobile.
By contrast, many mobile payment systems being tested today require a special near-field communication chip to be attached to or built into the phone. With Fig, the transaction is handled over the air using the phone's existing capabilities.
"We loved [Fig Card's] approach to point of sale," Chu wrote in the blog post, "particularly because it was driven by the same vision that we have at PayPal — in the future, transactions can be as smart as computer and not as dumb as paper.
"We don't need our physical wallets. We'll be able to pay any way we want, from any device, anywhere in the world with both flexibility and privacy."
PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc., did not disclose terms of the Fig deal.
Fig's payment process resembles how PayPal's mobile app handles person-to-person payments. PayPal simulates the tap-and-go nature of contactless payments without an NFC chip by letting users "bump" their phones together to initiate a transfer. Software on each phone detects the bump, but the phones do not directly interact.
