Card payments on your mobile - no hardware required

Mobile payments company Flint, has recently come to the end of its Beta. If you don't know who Flint are, but are weary with hearing of yet another "mobile payments" company, then think again ...Flint have a twist on the landscape as they read the card numbers of the payment card via the mobiles camera phone. No additional hardware needed!

Flint can take card payments on your mobile, without
the need for any additional hardware

 Given the fiddliness of carrying around a dongle as per the solutions from Square, iZettle, MPowa, Payleven (shall we go on...) then Flint really have a point of difference.

Yet, we still can't help raising the concern that more than the other solutions, this is going to face a huge amount of consumer trust issues - how keen will the average cardholder be on having his credit, debit, prepaid card being photographed by a stranger?

We said it before, but the technology may not be the barrier here. A great idea, but we'll be watching to see how and if it can take off.