PayPal Here Becomes an iPad Point of Sale System

PayPal is adapting its PayPal Here mobile acceptance technology for the iPad.

The company’s new iPad app can perform many of the same functions as its iPhone app, such as accepting PayPal and swiped card payments. The iPad app is being targeted at businesses that require hardware more robust than an iPhone to accept payments, yet don’t have a point-of-sale system.

The tablet app also allows users to scan an item’s bar code for faster checkout. The app can make a wireless connection to a cash drawer and printer and offers sales tracking via a “daily summary” report. The bar-code reading function relies on eBay's RedLaser, whereas the Here app's card-reading function uses technology from PayPal's Card.io to scan payment card details.

The added features make PayPal Here a closer threat to Square Register, which Square offers as a tablet-based alternative to a full point of sale terminal. Square recently began offering a "Business in a Box" package that includes a cash drawer and a receipt printer, thus lowering a barrier to using its Register system.

PayPal Here is “perfect for those small businesses that don’t already have an existing solution, but we are also working with dozens of existing vendors that supply retail POS sale solutions—from larger one like NCR to mid-market providers like Shopkeep, Leapset, Vend, Kounta and Erply—so that we can offer businesses new ways to connect with their customers without ripping out their existing solutions,” wrote Hill Ferguson, vice president of global product for PayPal, on the company’s blog.

Beyond Square, PayPal is pressured by a number of other competitors for its Here product in both the U.S. and Europe, where PayPal is about to launch a chip-and-PIN version of the Here reader. Intuit, iZettle, mPowa and VeriFone are all active overseas.

PayPal recently bought Duff Research to add to its pool of mobile developers.