What do you do after you start Twitter? Invent a credit card reader.

I had to check the date when I saw this one, April fool in October you Americans are funny.

"your bank is gonna laugh you out of the building when you say you want your stolen money back"

In USA, you are only liable for the first $50 by law. And if it's Visa, as a condition of using the name (Visa), the issuer has to agree that the owner is not liable for _any_ fraud. Of course, this may change as things like this increase the amount of fraud occurring.

We use a great POS system called RingItUp with our iPhones for trade shows we do throughout the year. It currently integrates with a number of Credit Card terminal programs on the iPhone (we use the aptly named Credit Card Terminal).
The whole system works great for the shows and the only thing we hate is having to manually enter the credit card numbers. An attached swipe mechanism is a great idea. Hopefully he will integrate this project with RingItUp or have it's own POS system too.

we heard you the first time.

There are various apps in the app store that process credit card transactions with ease. This is in no way a new idea or concept. Matter of fact take a look for yourself at some of these solutions that have been available for months now:

Billing: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326255801&mt=8

Pocket CC Terminal: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=320279447&mt=8

2CC Terminal: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=292042342&mt=8

There are more then 20 solutions currently available today.

Can't see this working in the UK and the rest of Europe as we no longer swipe credit cards as the cards use a chip and are inserted - the pin number is then entered. Chip & Pin as it is known was brought in over here a couple of years back and credit card companies really don't like retailers using the old signature based system - even online now credit card companies are moving to enhanced security called Securecode which requires a password to be provided when making a transaction to try and reduce the customer not present fraud levels.

i used one of these at Self Edge Denim in NYC. aside from it being a bit hard to a decent signature with your finger, it actually works flawlessly. i was impressed.

It's great to see that their co-founder is diversifying its portfolio, as people realize Twitter is more noise than signal.
On the other hand, I would never allow anyone swipe my card on a cheap device that was not verified by Visa and doesn't print a receipt.

So if someone presented you with their mobile phone and asked you to simply tap in your credit card number, would you do it?

I know I certainly wouldn't, add to that the fact that your fingermarks are going to be all over the screen too for a low tech way of seeing your pin number even after the fact. This is completely insecure. We're already told now to check that the proper merchant banking terminals haven't been tampered with, if it's someone's personal phone (to all outward appearances) your bank is gonna laugh you out of the building when you say you want your stolen money back.

Can anyone say identity theft on the cheap? :(