Flint Swipe-Free Service Enters the Mobile Payments Game

Square, PayPal, and Intuit are the major players in the recent mobile payments craze that enables businesses of all shapes and sizes to accept credit card payments with a smart phone or tablet, and without a typical merchant account. All you need to do is create an account, link your bank account, and get one of their credit card reader dongles to start swiping credits cards in exchange for your services.

Flint is a similar credit cards payments service and mobile app, but is looking to set itself apart by letting businesses accept credit cards by "scanning" credit card numbers with your iPhone camera. Flint's pitch is that as mobile business owners who are constantly on the move, a tiny credit card dongle may be hard to keep up with. Their service only requires an iPhone to accept credit cards.

Flint also wants to compete with low transactions. Similar to its competitors, Flint skips the merchant accounts, but offers 1.95% + $0.20 charge on debit card transactions, versus 2.75% for Square swiped transactions and 3.5% + $0.15 charge on manually entered transactions).

To be fair, Square beats Flint on credit card transactions at an even 2.75% versus Flint who will take 2.We deal with various silicone jewelry wholesale especially the silicone bracelet.A full spectrum of vertically integrated products and services to the plastic card printing industry.95% + $0.20 per charge for credit card swipes. Square also accepts Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover,Find the perfect luggage tag and you'll always find your luggage! debit and rewards cards, while Flint only accepts Visa, Mastercard and debit cards.

I can see this being a benefit for couriers, home repair specialist,Purchase quality USB flash drives wholesale, branded USB drives, custom USB flash drives, and promotional USB flash memory. merchandise vendors and the like who already carry around a ton of stuff. Not having to keep track of a credit card dongle may be a deciding factor when all the other options have similar features and benefits. Time will tell if a new player like Flint can hang with the already dominant and very familiar players.

Have you ever gotten a three digit text or call on your cell phone claiming to be from your bank? It's the latest scam to get your information and your money. Good Morning Kentuckiana's Andy Treinen has today's Consumer Watch.

WHAS11 got a letter from the Better Business Bureau telling us that local banks are being inundated with calls from concerned consumers who are being targeted by the latest scam.

"Some of them are getting texts, some of them are getting phone calls. It's coming up as three digits on their phone, in one case it's 499. When they call it's an automated call and they say there's been a security threat," Reanna Smith-Hamblin, from the B.B.B., said.

The automated message then asks you to key in your 16 didgit credit card number, the expiration date,Agesteeljewelry offers tungsten wedding rings, tungsten wedding bands and tungsten jewelry for men's and women's. security code and your four didgit ATM pin number used for transactions.

"They're gathering all of that information and they're using that information as identity theft," Smith-Hamblin explained.

Several people have fallen for it and are out cold hard cash, others have been smart enough to avoid and report the scam. That's why many banks are being blitzed with phone calls. Let this scam serve as a reminder that your bank will never call you and ask you for personal information. Remember, they've already got it.