Not to be outdone by mobile payments competitors Square and PayPal, financial services software company Intuit will release enhancements to its GoPayment mobile application on Monday, allowing U.S.-based fundraisers to accept credit card donations directly from smartphones or tablets.
The announcement comes on the heels of a similar offering from Square, Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey’s much-lauded, highly successful mobile payments startup, which offers a smartphone attachment that has largely overshadowed Intuit’s own GoPayment dongle. The Obama and Romney presidential campaigns recently announced partnerships with Square, which will provide scores of dongles to both organizations for accepting credit card donations.
GoPayment’s offering, however, isn’t limited to the presidential election. Intuit’s GoPayment app updates will not require customizing an already existing app, or building an entirely new app from scratch, a la the “Obama Square app” that the President’s fundraisers are equipped with. Instead, fundraisers literally flip a switch inside the existing GoPayment app, switching it into ‘donor’ mode. Along with the donor’s name and credit card information, the app collects address and employment info, as mandated by the Federal Elections Commission.
“Our app allows anyone — from a gubernatorial race to a national campaign — to start taking donations,” said Chris Hylen, vice president of Intuit payment solutions, in an interview before the announcement. “There’s no setup, no customization required at all.”
Launched a little over two years ago, Intuit’s mobile app has taken the backseat to Dorsey’s Square, which has held the lion’s share of the limelight and success. In 2011, Square processed over $2 billion in transactions (of which the company takes a 2.75 percent cut per every swiped card), and Dorsey says the company is on track to double that number in 2012.
Intuit’s secret weapon, however, lies in its less glamorous back-end. Intuit has been around for nearly three decades, and made its bread and butter in tax and financial software services; It’s the company that created QuickBooks, TurboTax and the Mint financial app. All of the payments data received with the GoPayment app can be easily imported into Intuit’s financial software, making it easier on small businesses and organizations to keep track of their finances. While Square’s Register and Card Case apps are well-designed and praised for their ease of use, they’re not pieces of accounting software.
But Square may not be Intuit’s biggest threat. Last week, PayPal debuted its own mobile payments initiative with ‘Here,‘ a triangle-shaped dongle that functions much the same as Square and GoPayment. Although Here currently functions only on iPhones (as opposed to GoPayment and Square, which both work on Android and iOS), PayPal’s transaction rate is .05 percent lower than Square’s (but still equal to GoPayment’s), and PayPal’s app can also scan credit cards and checks with the phone’s camera if swiping isn’t working. PayPal’s footprint is already massive to boot; the company expects to do over $7 billion in mobile transactions alone in 2012, not counting the company’s massive online presence.
Courting politicians, whose entire industry relies on billions of dollars in campaign financing, could be GoPayment’s best way to come up from behind. While it hasn’t given any specific names yet, Intuit claims it is “actively working with fundraisers, individual campaigns, committees, and other large political organizations” to put GoPayment into fundraisers’ hands. “We already have several Senate and Governor races using GoPayment with more in the works,” an Intuit spokeswoman said.
That’s more than PayPal can say, as the freshly launched ‘Here’ dongle isn’t yet in the hands of political fundraisers. Says PayPal director of communications Anuj Nayar: “We hope that they are interested to use our flexible, secure service so that they can receive funds in one account — whether they’re accepting donations online, on mobile devices or at rallies.”
