The smartphone continues to prove itself as the best convergence tool technology has ever seen.
PayPal unveiled a new feature earlier this month, that will allow payments to be done by swiping authorised debit and credit cards on smartphone-attached card readers.
This mobile payment solution is billed as a global first of its kind, and will be hugely popular with small businesses.
All this new solution will take to work is the PayPal Here™ app and a card reader plucked into a smartphone’s head phone inlet (see image below).
At the time of writing this blog, PayPal Here™ is compatible only with Android and iPhone smartphones.
According to MobileBurn, many countries will not benefit from this new mobile payment technology yet.
PayPal has picked a handful of countries – United States, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong – as front runners for the initial launch.
My guess is Africa will be at the back of the queue, as PayPal is not widely available on the continent currently.
However, it (PayPal) is slowly rolling out in countries such as South Africa where it was first offered exclusively to specified categories of FNB customers in early 2010, and it has lately become available to non-FNB customers with certain restrictions.
All we can do now is wait with abated breaths.
I welcome you to share your thought with me on PayPal Here™ in the comment section here below.
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