Loop Allows Mobile Payments With Any Credit Card Hardware
Mobile payments technology has been slow to reach mainstream acceptance, partially because of the ubiquity of credit card readers and the sluggishness of the industry to respond to change. A new startup, Loop, believes it has solved a major part of the problem by developing a dongle for smartphones that will facilitate payments via mobile and which is compatible with about 90% of existing credit card swiping systems. The dongle works by creating a changing magnetic field to mock the magnetic information received by the read head of a card swiper. The user experience is smoother than the one offered by other mobile payments solutions as well, allowing users to simply swipe their cards to add them to their virtual wallet, as long as the names on the cards match the name on the user’s verified Loop account. Improving ease of use for both users and vendors is critical to bringing mobile payments to the mainstream, and Loop’s first steps towards this end could be the initial push needed to get there.