PayPal’s Cash For Registers Tries To Outdo Square And Groupon With Its Own Bid To Rule The Register
PayPal today announced Cash for Registers to encourage merchants to switch to PayPal-powered point-of-sale solutions. The program is part of the payment giant’s bid to be the kingpin among local merchants looking for lower-cost ways of accepting credit card payments. The announcement comes on the same day that Square launched Stand to complement its Square register product on iPad tablets and Groupon expanded and rebranded its mobile point-of-sale solution as Breadcrumb.
In exchange for local retailers handing in their “dusty old cash registers” for PayPal’s services, the eBay-owned company is offering to waive credit, debit, check and PayPal-processing fees for the remainder of 2013 as well as free advertising for participating merchants in the process. As with the offerings launched today by PayPal’s two competitors, this offer is only valid in the U.S. for now.
David Marcus, the president of PayPal who has been the driver of the company’s push into mobile commerce, noted that the program begins in June when the company will reveal more details on the exact terms of the offer, such as whether there will be a cap on how much can be processed with no fee this year. Although PayPal Here is probably best known as one of the many services out there that uses a dongle attached to a smartphone to turn it into a card reader, the company is pushing deeper into the market by offering a bigger suite of services and devices to run them — much like Square and Groupon announced today.
In PayPal’s case, this includes a merchant app for iPad, an iPad stand, a cash drawer and printer. Part of the program will also involve PayPal promoting the sale of these products, which are made by a number of companies including Erply, Leaf, NCR, ShopKeep and others.
In fact, perhaps as a swipe at rivals like Square, Marcus plays up the fact that PayPal itself is not driving most of the hardware developments itself: “At PayPal we’ve spent a long time listening to small businesses and retailers of all sizes, and we came to the conclusion that no one company can cater to the needs of all industries,” he notes in a blog post. “That’s why we have handpicked select partners that are each best-in-class in their respective categories.”
Marcus notes that there will be more PayPal Here hardware partners announced soon.
On top of the free processing fees, PayPal is also offering another lure to merchants: free marketing to the company’s 55-million-plus U.S. customer base, noting which places local to them are PayPal- and Here-ready (presumably via the PayPal app). This is not unlike the Square Directory that Square has been offering to consumers as it pushes further into Foursquare territory as the platform for local search.
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Laser Mountain Played Laser Tag Onstage With Nerf Guns, Android Phones And A Node.js Server
Carson Britt and Matthew Drake convinced everyone with their onstage demo of Laser Mountain at the Disrupt NY Hackathon. They attached Android phones to the Nerf guns (that TechCrunch gave away yesterday) to recreate a laser tag game with a real-time score server.
After receiving the Nerf guns, they started working right away on Laser Mountain. “We already had the domain name lasermoutain.com, so we didn’t have a choice,” Britt said. When asked why they bought this domain, Drake answered, “I pick up domains all the time.”
The Android phones track movements using the built-in gyroscopes and then transmit the information to a Node.js server. To register when someone is firing, they use the phone’s microphones and the Nerf gun’s loud firing noise.
Last night, the team of two didn’t sleep at all to finish their hack on time for the onstage demo. It wasn’t their first hackathon but it was the first time at the Disrupt Hackathon.
But it’s not the end for Laser Mountain. “We are going to Kickstarter it,” Drake said. With fewer than 24 hours of development, the team is certainly talented enough to succeed.
You should watch the two developers play laser tag onstage:
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The TC New York Meetup + Disrupt Pitch-Off Is Tomorrow So RSVP Now
The TechCrunch NY Meetup is tomorrow evening, so get ready for a wild night of pitch-offs, pizza, and beer.
While we’re accustomed to throwing a solid meetup, we’re introducing a new ingredient into the mix in the form of a 60-second pitchoff, where founders can pitch their product to be a part of Disrupt NY in April.
Applications are currently closed for the event, but we have 20 awesome teams lined up ready to pitch their entrepreneurial hearts out. The winner gets free tickets to Disrupt and a spot in Startup Alley, and the runner up gets two free tickets to Disrupt NY, which is going down on April 27 – May 1.
The event is tomorrow night (Tuesday) from 6pm – 10pm at Santos Party House. If you’d like to attend the meetup, please register on Plancast here.
And whether you’re an investor, entrepreneur, dreamer, or tech enthusiast, we want to see you at the event so we can give you free beer and hear your thoughts. Come one, come all. It’s sure to be a night to remember.
A huge thanks to our awesome sponsors, Moo.com, Yext, and MyPizza.com.
Originally posted here: The TC New York Meetup + Disrupt Pitch-Off Is Tomorrow So RSVP Now
Christmas Business Directory | Elance Job
Type of site: Christmas Business Directory
Tabs: Home, about us, holiday blog, business directory, contact us
US map, ability to click on each state>click on city>and register business (sign-up)
Register business name, address, phone numbers, e-m…
Category: Design & Multimedia > Graphic Design
Type and Budget: Fixed price (Less than $500) Escrow
Time Left: 14 d, 23 h (Ends Jan 15, 2013 08:21 am ET)
Start Date: Dec 31, 2012
Proposals: 0
Client: nflenterprises (4 jobs posted, 0% awarded, $0 total purchased, Payment Method Verified)
Client Location: , United States
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Desired Skills: Web Design
Job ID: 36425492
Your Next Trackpad And Keyboard Will Be Wafer Thin
If you’ve been complaining about the thickness of your trackpad, Synaptics has something to show you. Their new Forcepad trackpad technology is wafer thin and uses a capacitive force sensor to register clicks and taps. The new trackpad offers 64 levels of sensitivity and can sense five fingers at once. There is no physical switch inside the trackpad so you won’t be able to “click” the pad anymore, but a sharp tap should get the job done.
Because there is no switch, the touchpad is far thinner than previous models and you can do a few clever tricks including controlling the scroll speed based on touchpad pressure. The technology should start making its way into hardware in 2013 so expect to see thinner, lighter laptop chassis in the next half year or so.
In addition to the touchpad technology, Synaptics is also working on ThinTouch capacitive keyboard keys. Unlike current keyboards that use “scissor” springs to pop back up when you touch them, these use capacitive controls that push the keys back up and can register the force of the keypress.
Anandtech notes that this could reduce the width of a keyboard by 50%, a great potential space savings for ultralight laptops.
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