The 5 Best Mobile Credit Card Readers for Your Small Business in 2018

The overall winner: Square

The Square reader and iPhone or Android mobile app may be the most recognizable and popular mobile card reader—and for good reason. For low and simple fees, a free and easy-to-set-up reader, and funding as fast as one day, Square is the best overall choice for small businesses who need a quick, affordable, and user-friendly way to accept credit card payments on the go.

With Square, you get a free card swipe reader and access to the free Square mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) app. Square’s fees aren’t the cheapest—but they are the simplest. You pay a flat 2.75% for all swiped credit card transactions with no extra per-transaction or monthly subscription fees.

Square’s fees aren’t the cheapest—but they are the simplest.”

Manually entered transactions will cost a bit more per entry at 3.5% plus $0.15. But if your service goes offline, you can take advantage of Square’s offline mode and pay the same flat processing fees for swipes.

Square accepts all major credit cards, including American Express, and works on iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices. (For newer iOS devices that lack a headphone jack, you’ll need to purchase Square’s $15 Lightning adapter.) The mPOS service includes inventory management, access for multiple users, personalized email receipts, and a simple tipping interface for retail and service businesses that accept them.

Square promises to deposit your money within one to two business days. This is about average, but it lacks the guaranteed next-day funding option offered by other products. It also touts a suite of high-end security and encryption protection, so you can trust in the safety of your and your customers’ money and information.

Best for pop-up shops: Shopify

An increasingly trendy way to run a business, pop-up shops allow online small-business owners to try out a new revenue stream: in-person sales. If you’re one of the tens of thousands of online retailers selling, for example, art, clothes, or jewelry, setting up a booth or kiosk could boost your brand and your profits.

In comes Shopify. It’s a platform that has long provided retailers a place to sell their wares online and also offers an in-person sales solution. With Shopify’s robust mobile app, online store, and mobile card readers, you can start selling products and processing payments wherever your customers are.

Shopify’s app and readers work with Android and iOS mobile devices and accept all major credit cards. Online reviews of the apps are just so-so, but you can access Shopify customer support 24/7.

The bottom line is if you’re thinking of testing out a physical presence for your burgeoning online store, Shopify is an excellent choice.

Cheapest transaction fees: PayAnywhere

For the least expensive option among the five major readers we reviewed, consider PayAnywhere’s low transaction fees and next-day funding.

You get a free PayAnywhere credit card reader and pay no monthly subscription fees, and you’ll pay just 2.69% per transaction with PayAnywhere’s basic package. Although Intuit offers a lower 2.4% rate for its basic QuickBooks GoPayment plan, you’ll pay an extra $0.25 for each GoPayment transaction. If your business will be taking a large volume of mobile payments, those per-transaction fees could add up.

One note of caution: PayAnywhere doesn’t seem to have the best reputation online. Its mPOS app is rated 2.5 out of 5 stars on iTunes and 3.8 out of 5 on Google Play—the lowest of all five brands we reviewed.

Best for QuickBooks users: GoPayment

From the familiar financial software company Intuit, QuickBooks GoPayment is the best mobile card reader for businesses already using QuickBooks accounting and sales software.

GoPayment offers two ways to get started. The first doesn’t require a monthly fee or subscription, and it charges you 2.4% plus $0.25 per transaction swipe. Like we mentioned above, those per-transaction fees can become expensive—especially if your business does a lot of small-value transactions.

For a better route, choose GoPayment’s monthly payment option. It costs $20 per month but brings the transaction costs down to 1.6% plus $0.25 per swipe. This plan saves you even more if your transactions tend to be higher, say in the $75 range. Check out our transaction fee chart below for a comparison of mobile reader costs to see how these costs play out.

GoPayment doesn’t have the fastest funding time—you get deposits within two to four business days. But its QuickBooks integration may compensate for the funding delay because your transactions are automatically recorded and synced with your bookkeeping software.

Transaction fees with GoPayment are higher than its competitors’ fees, and the reader will cost you $19—but it can accept chip cards right out of the box. Surprisingly, there is no GoPayment solution for contactless payments, but with the growing popularity of Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other NFC-enabled payments, we expect Intuit will provide this option soon.

Most payment options: PayPal Here

The PayPal Here mobile card reader and mPOS app are a great option if your business has both a large online and in-person presence. It’s especially great if you need to take lots of different payment types, like checks, and want next-day funding.

A basic PayPal Here swipe reader will cost you $14.99. To accept chip or contactless payments, you can buy a $25 EMV reader, $60 NFC reader, or $79 three-in-one reader—the cheapest three-in-one device we found. All three of these accessories are Bluetooth enabled, which means you can accept payments from anywhere within range of your mobile devices.

PayPal Here also lets you accept checks through the mobile iPhone, Android, or Windows app. And of course, customers, vendors, and anyone else can use their own PayPal accounts to send and receive funds.

If your business needs the flexibility to add additional credit card terminals, consider purchasing from PayPal’s suite of POS products. You can get receipt printers, cash drawers, and POS device stands and cases. PayPal Here also lets you customize your profile and receipts, manage inventory, add multiple users, and access lots of online tools and resources.

More small-business payment processing solutions

Dwolla: Peer-to-peer bank transfers for growing businesses

Dwolla doesn’t process credit cards and doesn’t have a mobile card reader. But considering the buzz around it, we’d be remiss not to mention this intriguing peer-to-peer payment processor for businesses.

Let’s be clear, Dwolla isn’t a solution if you need to simply take customer payments in a store or online. And as a service that starts at $2,000 a month, it’s beyond the budget of most small businesses.

What the company does do well, however, is help companies make large electronic bank account transfers quickly at a fraction of the cost of other Automated Clearing House (ACH) processing companies.

Dwolla is a comprehensive and secure application programming interface (API) that you can integrate into your own business information technology infrastructure. If you frequently send and receive ACH payments, contact Dwolla for a customized quote.

Fattmerchant: Good for high transaction-volume retailers

If your business does a large number of transactions—about 1,000 or more per month—Fattmerchant offers an enticing monthly subscription service that doesn’t charge transaction percentages above the standard merchant fees.

Fattmerchant eschews the traditional per-transaction rate of its competitors and charges just a monthly subscription cost plus a low per-transaction fee. Other mPOS solutions bake the interchange fees into their transaction rates, so in contrast, Fattmerchant is a fantastic option if your business processes transactions in the thousands.

The standard $99 no-contract subscription gets you an EMV-ready mobile card reader, access to its virtual mPOS software, and integration with major POS merchant terminals. Each transaction costs you only what cardholders’ banks charge for interchange fees plus $0.08 —that’s it.

Fattmerchant provides free 24/7 technical support, analytics, and tools. Long-term customers are eligible for next-day bank account funding. But it’s probably not a great option for smaller businesses with low-volume transactions. In addition, the mobile card reader currently works with only iOS mobile devices, and Fattmerchant doesn’t currently offer a solution for contactless payments.

InnerFence: Not recommended

Originally, we placed InnerFence on our “best of” list as a worthy credit card processing contender. This mobile reader and mPOS solution has a few things to like, including a free swipe reader and the ability to work with Windows phones and Mac and PC desktops. But things go downhill from there. Transaction fees start at 2.9% plus $0.30—higher than any other reader we reviewed—and you’re required to sign up for a pricey merchant account to use the service. If you don’t have an existing merchant account, Innerfence offers one for $39 per month (billed annually).

Even if you do have an existing merchant account, you still have to pay Innerfence a monthly fee to use its reader and mPOS system. The lowest plan costs $9 per month, but you can connect only one device and user at a time. The next option is $79 per month, which—combined with the high transaction costs—make Innerfence too expensive for us to recommend it.

ROAMpay: BlackBerry compatible

ROAMpay is unique because it’s the only option we found on the market to offer a combination card swiper that works with iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. It even works with certain flip phones and older mobile phones. So if you have these devices and want to use them for accepting mobile payments, ROAMpay may be worth a look.

ROAMpay also provides end-to-end encryption for transactions and secure PIN-based user authentication, ensuring the highest levels of data security possible.

The true cost of mobile card readers

To give you an idea of how much each product will cost your business to accept mobile payments, we calculated the transactions and monthly fees for each plan. As you can see, PayAnywhere is the clear winner in terms of cost—especially if your average transaction amounts are low.

Note that we didn’t include ROAMpay or Fattmerchant in the tables below. Because ROAMpay doesn’t clearly define its fees publicly and Fattmerchant’s costs depend on variable credit card company merchant fees, neither company could be accurately compared in this format.

Data effective: 01/10/2018

Data effective: 01/10/2018

As your transaction amounts go up, the rankings shift a bit. PayAnywhere’s subscription is still the cheapest option, but the monthly QuickBooks GoPayment plan pulls into a close second place thanks to its super-low 1.6% rate.

Everything you need to know about mobile card readers

Have you recently decided you need to start accepting mobile payments but aren’t sure about some of the details? Start here to learn the basics.

What’s the difference between mobile card readers and mobile POS systems?

A mobile point-of-sale system, or mPOS, is a program that runs on a smartphone or tablet and uses software to process business transactions like a traditional POS terminal. The advantage of an mPOS is that it can function without the need for expensive electronic cash registers or merchant services—and it can be used just about anywhere.

A mobile card reader is an electronic device that connects to an mPOS system to accept credit and debit cards. Basic readers let you swipe cards to take payments. Higher-functioning devices can accept EMV (chip card) and NFC (contactless) payments too.

What are NFC, EMV, and magstripe readers?

Magstripe is short for magnetic stripe, referring to credit cards that store information in a band of magnetic material. All mobile card readers can accept magstripe cards.

EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard, and Visa, and the term is used for a rapidly developing worldwide standard for credit card payments. EMV-enabled readers can accept microchip-enabled cards that allow for more secure authentication of card transactions.

Near-field communication (NFC) readers accept “contactless” card payments like Apple Pay and Google Pay. These readers are called contactless because the card information is stored on a separate device—such as a smartphone—which need only be placed near the reader to initiate a transaction.

Do I need a chip reader?

To protect your business and customers, you should adopt EMV-enabled readers as soon as possible. Although not all issued cards are 100% chip ready, their use is growing.

Chip cards are harder to counterfeit, which means customers are at a lower risk of fraud. In 2015, the rules governing who is liable in cases of in-store credit card fraud shifted from the credit card companies to businesses that don’t adopt the EMV-reading standard.³ So you’ll be liable for a counterfeit purchase if it’s made using a chip card, but if your business uses EMV readers, your risk in counterfeit cases is reduced. It’s a win-win!

The takeaway

Overall, the popular, affordable, and secure Square mobile card reader is the best choice for most small businesses. But depending on your business’s needs, one of our other favorite mobile card readers may be the right one for you.

Do you have a different mobile card reader or payment processing system that works best for you? Let us know in the comments below.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don’t guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.

Sources
1. CNBC, “Here’s How Many Americans Say They Don’t Carry Cash”
2. CNBC, “Here’s How Many Americans Say They Don’t Carry Cash”
3. Visa, “EMV Liability Shift”