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Jack Dorsey, chairman of Twitter Inc., attends a question and answer session at the Dublin Web Summit it in Dublin, Ireland, on Friday, Oct. 29, 2010. Dorsey said demand to advertise on the social-networking site, whose users send 100 million short messages a day, is growing following experiments with brands earlier this year. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Jack Dorsey
Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Square CEO Jack Dorsey (Image: Bloomberg News)
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Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks Corp., speaks during a media event in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, April 18, 2012. Starbucks is planning a bigger push into smaller cities in China as the world's largest coffee-shop operator triples stores in the country that will become its second-biggest market by 2014. Photographer: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Howard Schultz
Nelson Ching/Bloomberg

Square's Success

Square's partner Starbucks is known for its mobile-payments savvy, and the coffee chain's CEO, Howard Schultz, is joining Square's board. As for Square's pricing, merchants began switching to the flat-fee option the day it was announced. (Image: Bloomberg News)
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PayPal

Square's mobile wallet allows consumers to authenticate payments by transmitting their photo to the merchant upon entering a store. PayPal does this too, and it has begun promoting this feature heavily, including a prominent push at this year's Telluride Film Festival. (Image: ShutterStock)
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LevelUp

$275 a month is still no small change. SCVNGR's LevelUp went free in July, dropping its 2% transaction fee to instead earn revenue on a loyalty and incentive system it ties to its mobile-payments app.
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VeriFone/Ingenico

Legacy players VeriFone and Ingenico produce their own mobile card readers to address the needs of smaller merchants. These vendors say they can provide an easy transition to conventional terminals as small businesses grow. (Image: ShutterStock)
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Intuit

Intuit is talking up its ability to link its GoPayment mobile card reader with its QuickBooks Point of Sale software. Intuit is betting that users will not want to switch to Square if it means giving up their mobile reader's connection to QuickBooks.
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Underbanked

And for those very small operations, Intuit also offers a prepaid card account for depositing funds earned from GoPayment sales. This allows even the underbanked to accept mobile payments. (Image: ShutterStock)
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mPowa

London-based mPowa entered the U.S. market by enabling merchants to tie its mobile card reader and software to an existing payment system. (Image: ShutterStock)
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Groupon

Daily-deals provider Groupon reportedly is branching into payments with a device it is testing that would undercut Square's standard transaction fee. (Image: ShutterStock)
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ISO Support

Square sells its products directly, leaving independent sales organizations out of the process. One ISO, PowerPay LLC, launched its own mobile card-acceptance system called AppCharge. Another, Collective Point of Sale Solutions Ltd., began distributing a mobile-payment acceptance device that other ISOs can sell. (Image: ShutterStock)

Retailers Cards Credit Payment processing Technology Mobile payments
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