Merchant Focus And Inner Fence Acquire iPhone Credit Card Processer AppNinjas

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

E-commerce company Merchant Focus Processing and Inner Fence have acquired AppNinjas, creator of Swipe Credit Card Terminal for iPhone (formerly iSwipe). Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Inner Fence, which is actually a competitor of AppNinjas, develops a credit card processor for the iPhone and Mac computer. Both Inner Fence and AppNinjas will be rolling out integrated retail hardware to allow for retail-based swiped transactions for processing on both iPhone and iPod touch. The plan is to offer the hardware free of charge to new merchants that enroll with either Inner Fence or AppNinjas.

Of course, AppNinjas and Inner Fence will face competition from Jack Dorsey’s Square, which just debuted in the app store and has been receiving rave reviews. Square works by way of a tiny card reader that plugs into the headphone jack on the device. It takes finger signatures on the touchscreen, generates email or SMS receipts, calculates sales tax, and comes with an online accounting dashboard to keep track of sales.

Unlike Square, however, AppNinjas’ app does not come with a actual swiping device. You input a credit card’s information into the app to process the transaction.

Company: Inner Fence
Website: innerfence.com
Launch Date: October 2007

Inner Fence is a Seattle-based software development company focused on building credit card processing apps for the Apple platform. Credit Card Terminal for iPhone, featured in Apple’s TV commercial “Office”, allows merchants to process credit cards from anywhere using just their iPhone. Credit Card Terminal is also available on iPad, iPod touch, and Mac.

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Company: AppNinjas
Website: appninjas.com
Launch Date: March 15, 2009

AppNinjas makes Swipe, a popular credit card terminal for the iPhone. Founded in 2009 by Bryan Kennedy and Zander Ford, Swipe quickly grew to the number one credit card terminal in the App Store. AppNinjas was purchased in May 2010 by Inner Fence.

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