Phone Image Eliminates Card Swipe, ISO Says

Payline Data wants to add smaller businesses to its roster of merchant services clients, and figures “no swipe” mobile payments provides a good way to get in the door.

The Chicago-based ISO has become an early participant in Flint’s partner program. Flint offers mobile point of sale acceptance by using the smartphone’s camera to scan an image of the payment card, as opposed to other vendors that rely on a hardware attachment—often called a “dongle”—to read swiped card payments.

Payline expects the software-based card acceptance app will appeal to businesses that accept fewer than 10,000 payments per month.

“These businesses will likely have people moving around a lot to provide services and will be accepting payments while on the go,” says Jeff Shea, a co-founder of Payline Data. “They likely have their phone with them, but may not carry around a dongle.”

Payline has mostly provided merchant services for larger businesses near Chicago, and provides its own proprietary mobile point of sale service for that segment. Its clients are businesses that accept between 10,000 and 100,000 payments per month.

While Payline’s own mobile point of sale system uses attachments to accept payments, Shea says the larger businesses typically have employees who are dedicated to payments and would be more likely to carry the hardware with them and more familiar with its use.

Other mobile point of sale providers such as Tantrum Street and PayPal offer a swipeless card acceptance option using the mobile device’s camera.

To broaden its merchant base in a crowded market of providers, Flint has formally launched its partner program for ISOs and other merchant service providers.

Flint’s resellers—another early partner is NXGEN subsidiary Fidano—offer Flint’s technology, which also includes invoicing and loyalty services.

Flint has signed one other partner that it did not name.

Working with ISOs “puts more feet onto the street for us,” says Ed Simnett, vice president of business development for Flint. “We want to make sure we’re efficient in how we get our product out there.”