PayStand Offers First Bitcoin mPOS
Bitcoins could soon be easier to use at your local point-of-sale.
Payment processor PayStand, which made waves last year with its announcement that it would process bitcoin transactions along with credit cards and ACH in its online payment platform, is now moving into the POS space with a mobile app that will process bitcoins alongside traditional forms of payment.
The company also launched its first iOS app yesterday.
The Santa Cruz, Calif.-based company also announced a Square-like card reader for merchants, pictured here. The app also features RDC for capturing check images. The company sent the following explanation as to how the bitcoin portion of the solution would work:
To use Bitcoin for the mPOS/mobile app – the customer can point their Bitcoin wallet from their phone to the code on the merchant’s phone [or tablet], as well as click a link in an email they get, in order to pay.
PayStand’s mission has always been to help merchants avoid paying high card fees, which led CEO Jeremy Almond to look to virtual currency as a possible solution.
Almond has noticed two trends in the past year, which has been rocky for bitcoin. First is the currency’s increasing stability. Currently priced around $250, the currency has not seen wild fluctuations like those that knocked it from high valuation last fall. Second is that bitcoin is moving from a consumer-facing technology to something deeper in the payments plumbing. “You’re starting to see more cases where bitcoin is operating elegantly behind the scenes,” Almond said.
Meanwhile, New York-based POS company ShopKeep is making the opposite move into payment processing, it was announced yesterday. ShopKeep purchased Payment Revolution, a bootstrapped startup in the payment processing space. Payment Revolution’s CEO, Etie Hertz, joins ShopKeep as VP of payments. ShopKeep has raised $40 million and is currently raising a D round.
Continued consolidation in the payments space has the potential to lead to more situations like this — two companies that were formerly complementary now find themselves direct competitors.
