Want to Process Credit Cards on the iPhone? You Need to Read This First

Processing credit cards with your iPhone has become one of the fastest and most efficient ways to complete sales transactions for customers. No matter what type of business you run, if you have a traditional brick-and-mortar store or take your products on the road to trade shows and conferences, you can continue to process sales with little effort.

Great, you’ve decided using your iPhone to process credit cards, so which software app do you use? With so many choices its important you read up on the pros and cons of each before making your choice. We’ve picked five of the most popular iPhone credit card processing apps on the market to help break it down for you.

Fattmerchant

This is one of the newer software apps, active since 2014; these guys made a name for themselves by moving towards flat-rate, subscription style pricing. Fattermerchant offers customers multiple pricing plans and rates. If a flat fee on all transaction doesn’t work for your business model, you can customize it to receive monthly charges of a fixed fee along with a fixed per-transaction amount above interchange. The mobile app and card reader are great for processing credit card payments on an iPhone, but they also offer EMV compatible countertop terminals, a virtual terminal, online payment gateways and more. If you have multiple payment processing needs, Fattermerchant could be a good option.

Clover Go

Clover Go is one of the big competitors for Square (which we will visit later). Offering EMV compatible & contactless payment processing using your iPhone or Android device, Clover Go makes mobile credit card processing easy. A bonus to Clover Go is its built-in reporting tool that gives business owner insight into their sales activity and even the local competitors. Rates vary depending on what reseller you chose, but all Clover Go readers are backed with TransArmor protection to keep your customers’ data safe and secure. Clover Go offers a simple solution for accepting credit cards because you simply take it out of the box and connect to your iPhone to get started. After a quick app install you will be able to accept mobile payments on your terms.

Shopify

Shopify has launched a point-of-sale software solution the iPhone, which has now made it one of the contenders for payment processing software. Cards can be processed with a free headphone jack card swiper, or if you want to pay a small fee, you can receive an EMV reader that comes with a variety of services. Inventory syncing, emailed receipts, automatic tax calculations, and in-store refunds are just a few of the added services that business owners receive when signing up with Shopify.

Since most people processing credit card transactions on their iPhone are mobile merchants, Shopify POS is a good fit because you can process transactions virtually through your web store and on site. One thing to be aware of before choosing Shopify is that the POS app does not support tipping, which could be a big problem for certain industries.

Square

Square is pretty competitive when it comes to processing credit card transactions on your iPhone because it is generally fast & easy to get started. With no set-up costs, and no need to choose an additional merchant service company the thought of using Square is pretty appealing. Square offers customers no monthly fee. However, it does charge a per transaction fee, so this type of software app is generally best be suited for a low-volume business. Clover Go has a leg up on Square when it comes to customer service; Square doesn’t even have a dedicated support phone number. Plus there are some additional policies to be aware of if you are processing transactions that are card not present, and even adding holds to for no apparent reason.

PayPal Here

One of the first suppliers for digital payment PayPal still lacked a mobile processing app—enter PayPal Here which is fairly new to the market. PayPal is using its existing customer base to recruit customers for the new mobile processing app requiring that you must first have a PayPal account before installing the PayPal Here app. Once you’ve taken the appropriate registration steps, PayPal sends you a free card reader that is ready to be used once it arrives. All transactions that take place with your PayPal Here app are stored and can be viewed in your traditional PayPal account, keeping things pretty organized for business owners and merchants.

Most users have noted positive experiences with customer support; the one drawback seems to be the with the app itself which could be in large part to it being a new arrival. Processing fees for PayPal here are pretty comparable to the competition with 2.7% for swiped cards and 3.5% plus $0.15 for keyed-in transactions.   

Just the tip of the iceberg

In today’s market, there are so many mobile processing apps you can use with your iPhone that we have just scratched the surface. However, with these mobile processing apps being the most popular, we think this is a good jumping off point for research if you are looking to process credit cards with your iPhone.