Intuit Inc. is taking GoPayment north to Canada as the company looks to move the mobile card reader and application to countries outside the U.S.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company later this quarter will begin offering GoPayment services to Canadian small businesses and anyone who sells products or services that wants to accept credit card payments on an Apple Inc. iPhone, iPad or iPod touch device, the company announced in a Jan. 10 news release.
In the U.S., Intuit also sells GoPayment through such venues as Staples, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores, and the company hopes eventually to add GoPayment availability at third-party locations in Canada, Trevor Dryer, Intuit head of product management for mobile payments and point of sale, tells PaymentsSource. For now, it will sell the GoPayment reader directly in that country through its website and the application through app stores.
In Canada, GoPayment users will pay an undisclosed fee per transaction. In the U.S., swiped GoPayment transactions with no monthly fees incur a charge of 2.7% of the sale. A monthly payment option costs $12.95 per month, with a swiped-transaction rate of 1.7% of the sale.
Pricing in Canada will be similar, but Intuit is still exploring whether to include a monthly-payment option with a lower rate, Dryer says. Final rates will be released later this quarter, he says.
Intuit also soon will begin shipping a free, newly designed GoPayment Card reader in both the U.S and Canada. The new card-reader design is based on feedback Intuit received from users of GoPayment and competing devices, Dryer says. The new device, which also will be free, has a “nicer look and feel” compared with the original, he says.
It features a silicone sleeve that conforms to the phone or tablet to provide stability support to keep the reader from moving or spinning when swiping a card. In addition, Intuit improved the swipe channel to read cards accurately the first time by putting it on an angle, beveling it and making it longer, according to the release.
IDTech of Cypress, Calif., assisted in designing the ASIC chips in the device to improve the card reader performance, Dryer says.
Intuit expects to announce other countries where GoPayment will be offered soon, he says, declining to discuss specifics. “That’s the $1 million question; we’re actively working on the next geography,” Dryer says.
In November, Intuit launched a prepaid card whose account merchants may use to deposit their GoPayment sales (
What do you think about this? Send us your feedback.
