Payleven announce chip & PIN solution for mobile payments

This week we saw mobile Payleven announce the launch of their chip & PIN solution for mobile payment acceptance. If the number of market entrants is any indication, then mobile point of sale (POS) is clearly a growing area, but it is unlikely to take off without chip & PIN: currently VISA is not preparing to accept mobile payments without chip & pin, so any entrant to the market that can only accept MasterCard really has their work cut out.

Payleven's mobile payment acceptance

With a crowded space, then all the players are trying to establish their position in the market – Payleven’s release announcing them as the “first pan-European mobile payments company with Chip & PIN”.  But the detail of the release indicates they will only be accepting registrations from 15th October – so not much difference to mPowa?

We’re still interested to see how consumers will respond to mobile POS – in our own trials, less than 10% were willing to entertain using their card to make a payment through a mobile phone. While Chip & PIN is intended to offer greater security around the payment process, we must consider that the consumer may be even more reluctant to enter their PIN in a mobile device.

For the market to fulfil the potential expected by the mobile payment  providers, then the issue may not be one of technology solutions, but of establishing consumer confidence in the technology.

SumUp joins European Mobile POS market

This week we see another entrant to the Mobile POS market in the form of SumUp - basically an opportunity for small (or simply mobile) businesses to accept card payments via a smart phone app with a plug-in card reader.

SumUp users a plug-in card reader
and ios / Android app to take card
payments via mobile phone

SumUp are not new in this area, with the likes of Square, PayPal’s Here, iZettle, mPowa, Payleven and Intuit’s GoPayment and you can expect there to be others on the way - we know of a number under development for launch soon in the UK.

The principle is sound for a number of reasons, not least because it makes it easy for small merchants to start accepting card payments. But the bigger issue for the sector is over the supported technology - currently the mobile POS solutions are favouring a "signature" with the user running their finger on the smart phone screen.

However, since 2004 Chip and PIN has been compulsory in the UK and Ireland and as yet, while the plug-in card readers can read the card chip, they do not support the secure PIN verification. iZettle have recently got into trouble with Visa as a result of their authentication and so a more long winded approach has been devised, which is less user friendly and will thus undoubtedly slow the practical adoption.

Anyway - this technical hurdle is surely only a blip. We're sure there will be many further advances in mobile POS to come and expect we'll be involved ourselves in some way. More details on that in the future.

Read the full artcile at TechCrunch: Make Way For Another European Square: SumUp Launches With $20M+ In Backing