One of the latest or should I say newest mobile payment apps to hit the market is Flint. Unlike other mobile payment apps such as Square (from Paypal) or Isis this app doesn’t require a dongle on the handset to work. This free app simply uses the mobile’s camera to scan the number from the front of a credit card and uses it along with other security features like the customer’s signature to complete and process the transaction. The entire procedure seems to be very safe and fast (see the attached video at the bottom of this post).
Flint Mobile, the company behind this revolutionary new app today announced that it has raised about $ 3 million from two top level Venture Capitalists namely Storm ventures and True ventures. Flint Mobile will use this money to further develop this technology and hire more people to market the app.
Flint – the mobile payment app is currently available only for the iPhone but we expect other cross platform versions soon enough as it is generating enough interest already.
How Flint works
A merchant who could be a shop or business owner just enters the amount of the customer’s bill on the screen of his iphone. Then he uses the iPhone’s camera to scan the number from the front of the customer’s credit card. No other vital information is recorded by the app. After entering some more information (like the customer’s email address) the customer has to sign on the screen with his finger to authenticate the transaction. A receipt is immediately sent on the customer’s email.
The merchant can also get the receipt copy from the app and the transactions are stored in the ‘history’ for future reference.
How does Flint earn
This may be an important question considering that Flint is a free app. Well, each time this app is used for making payments, Flint earns a small commission in tune with the current market norms. Greg Goldfarb, co-founder and CEO of Flint Mobile has issued a formal statement that says, “Essentially, we are starting to turn credit card transaction fees into an investment in online customer engagement”.
Probably Flint has realized the strong potential the future holds for mobile payments as softwares such as Square (from PayPal) has already made strong inroads among small business owners using smartphones. The focus of Flint is to create a mobile payment app which is not dependent on hardware as well as to rationalize the transaction fee for mobile payments which may be higher in case of dongle dependent transactions.
Another area where Flint has the edge over Square is that payments through Flint are transferred right away (as claimed by the company) where as transactions through Square take one day to process.
The company will also help in customizing receipts for the business owners.
All of you who are interested can sign up for your ‘beta account’ with the company through their website by clicking here.
To actually see Flint in action, just see the video attached below: