Intuit is announcing major news this evening around its mobile credit card swiping device and Square-competitor GoPayment reader. Intuit is one of the first major U.S. mobile payments readers to go international, with a launch in Canada. And Intuit is debuting a newly, redesigned sleek version of its reader.
Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones and similar to Square’s device, the card reader simply plugs into the audio jack of a phone or tablet. The credit card data is also encrypted, (and never stored on the phone).
→ Read More
Intuit has just released some good news for ”Quicken for Mac” users. The accounting software company says they will have a solution that makes Quicken 2007 for Mac “Lion-compatible” by early spring 2012. Yes, irony alert. Back in July, I wrote about the dilemma facing those users, because Apple Lion OS was dropping support for Rosetta. Without Rosetta, Quicken 2007 wouldn’t run on the Mac with Lion. And I wrote each of the three options Intuit proposed (Quicken Essentials for Mac, Mint.com, Quicken for Windows) had their own flaws.
Aaron Forth, Intuit’s General Manager of its Personal Finance Group which includes Quicken and Mint.com, wrote a note to existing customers saying “I am committed to creating products to help you reach your financial goals. I recognize, however, that we have not always delivered on this promise to Quicken Mac customers.” → Read More
Intuit has made an interesting move today with its mobile credit card reader GoPayment reader. Intuit is allowing merchants to keep and receive funds on a prepaid credit card as opposed to depositing the amount in a bank account.
Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment, which competes directly with Square, is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones and the card reader simply plugs into the audio jack of a phone or tablet. The credit card data is also encrypted, (and never stored on the phone). → Read More
Intuit is the latest company to enable e-commerce on Facebook, announcing today that businesses using the company’s Websites software can create a store on the social network.
Intuit SimpleStore for Facebook will automatically sync the merchant’s website and Facebook page, loading inventory and enabling payments. Business owners can accept credit or debit card payments directly on Facebook, via Intuit, with no added log-ins required for the customer. All transactions are powered by Intuit’s payments back-end. → Read More
Inuit’s GoPayment reader, which competes directly with Square, is making a significant move in the mobile payments space today, partnering with Verizon Wireless to sell its credit card readers in Verizon Wireless’ 2,300 retail stores and business-to-business sales channels.
Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones and the card reader simply plugs into the audio jack of a phone or tablet. The credit card data is also encrypted, (and never stored on the phone).
→ Read More
BigTime Software, which offers cloud-based productivity software tools to professional services firms, this morning announced that it has raised $2 million in Series A funding in a round from LTC Partners, Geneva Venture Investment Management, Hickory Grove and Howell Capital.
The company delivers time, billing and practice management software-as-a-service that integrates with Intuit QuickBooks to professional services firms in industries like accounting, architecture, marketing services and IT services. → Read More
Intuit, the same company that brought you QuickBooks accounting software, has today announced the QuickBooks Mobile app for Android. Now, small businesses that use QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Online will have access to their data from their Android phone.
The app has already been made available to iOS users, but Android fans will now be able to get in on the amateur accounting action. Features include access to customer and sales info, as well as customer balances, the ability to create estimates on the fly and on-site invoicing. Information added to QuickBooks Mobile is automatically synced with QuickBooks. → Read More
Intuit’s “Quicken 2007 for the Mac” users have a problem. The personal financial accounting software is not going to work under Lion, Apple’s new OS 10.7, due to be released as early as Wednesday. Intuit suggests three solutions. But each has its own flaws, especially if you want to track investments, reconcile your financial statements or not have to buy 3 software programs or a PC. There are non-Intuit alternatives out there, each with their own fan base. None of them match Quicken 2007, a far-from-perfect but still very useful, powerful program.
Software is supposed to get better over time, but for Mac home accounting users, that’s not the case. One of the very first killer ‘apps’ for Apple computers was VisiCalc, a spreadsheet program used by some to balance checkbooks, track credit cards and determine net worth. We’ve come a long way since then, but for Mac users looking for a traditional and full featured personal accounting program, there is no easy solution. → Read More
Inuit’s GoPayment reader, which competes directly with Square, is about to become more attractive to small businesses. The company has made the decision dropped the transaction fee ($0.15 per transaction) for both new and existing customers for Visa, MasterCard and Discover cards, both swiped and key-entered as well as qualified and non-qualified transactions. The move will go into effect on Monday.
Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones. So now, businesses using the mobile payments reader will only pay a flat 2.7 percent fee of a transaction for any swiped cards. Intuit will charge 3.7 percent for both key entered and non-qualified transactions. → Read More
Erick recently got a sneak peek at Intuit’s GoPayment app for the iPad, a mobile payment app that lets anyone who sells a product or service get paid on the spot by processing credit cards.
This morning, the company announced that the iPad app is now available. The GoPayment apps brings a new layout that takes advantage of iPad’s large, high-resolution display and multi-touch interface. → Read More
Last night I caught up with Intuit founder Scott Cook and Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint who know runs Intuit’s personal finance group. I whipped out my iPhone and did an impromptu interview. Cook and Patzer talk about where growth is coming from at Intuit, how it tries to encourage entrepreneurism, and the “payment graph.”
Cook is really excited about SnapTax, the TurboTax iPhone app that lets people do their taxes by snapping a picture of their W-2 forms. The same OCR technology will soon be baked into the company’s upcoming GoPayment apps for accepting checks via photo. Patzer came into Intuit through the $170 million acquisition of Mint. Cook knows the value of injecting entrepreneurial DNA into the larger organization, and he tries to foster that spirit throughout Intuit.
Since Intuit bought Mint, it’s kept on growing from 1.7 million to 5.6 million users, and gradually it is being connected with hooks into Intuit’s more established products like TurboTax and Quicken. Off camera I asked why doesn’t QuickBooks offer a similar service to help businesses visualize and organize their expenses like Profitably does with QuickBook’s APIs, and Patzer agreed, “That is something that should be in QuickBooks.” (That is just his opinion, he doesn’t run QuickBooks). → Read More
Mobile payments are finally taking off right now. But it is not mobile wallets for consumers with NFC-chipped mobile phones leading the way. It is payment apps for small merchants like those made by Square and Intuit’s GoPayment. Tonight at an Intuit showcase in New York City, I got a sneak peak at several new Intuit products still in development, including an upcoming GoPayment tablet app that aims to replace the cash register for small businesses, Intuit 401k, and an iPad Check-in app for doctor’s offices.
The GoPayment app will work on both the iPad and Android tablets In addition to taking credit card payments with a swiper that plugs into the headphone jack, it also lets merchants set up a cash register with their own products and prices. They can even take pictures of the products with their iPad 2 and the picture is placed on a virtual button to make it easy for any employee to ring up the items. It will also have the ability to take pictures of checks and deposit them from the image. → Read More
Last night, after much procrastination, I started my taxes—on my couch with a movie playing on the TV, using only my iPad. I was testing out an early build of TurboTax, which is now available for the iPad (in addition to the online and desktop versions). I got through the bulk of my taxes by the time the movie was over.
Taxes are never fun, even on the iPad. But the new TurboTax iPad app makes it fairly seamless. Anyone familiar with TurboTax will recognize the interface. It takes you through the same guided questions the online and desktop versions do, asks you about your financial situation, and keeps a tally of your refund up top (or, gulp, taxes you still owe). The app works in both landscape and portrait mode, and knows when to pop up a number keypad or the full keyboard. → Read More
Intuit raised eyebrows in early January when it rolled out a free version of its Square-competitor, GoPayment, which is a mobile payment application and small credit card reader that attaches to smartphones. The caveat to the free version, as reported by Fortune, was that businesses had until mid-February to sign up for the free service, whereas Square is and always has been free to users (minus the credit card and processing fees). Today, Intuit is announcing that it will continue to offer GoPayment with a free credit card reader and no monthly fee for an indefinite amount of time (the offer was originally scheduled to end yesterday). The company also says that since the initial free offer, Intuit’s customer acquisition rate for GoPayment has more than tripled.
Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones. → Read More
Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco today, Scott Cook, the founder and chairman of Intuit, and Beth Comstock, the chief of marketing and vice president of General Electric (GE) traded notes on innovation, investing and acquisitions.
Intuit’s best-known products include Turbo Tax, Quickbooks and Quicken, software that helps consumers, the owners of small and medium sized businesses and large financial institutions save or manage their money. The company’s more recent releases include the Intuit GoPayment mobile app and Mophie credit card reader, the latter of which began sales at Apple stores about three weeks ago, and Turbo Tax SnapTax, a mobile app which allows users to “snap, prepare and file” their taxes with a smart mobile device. → Read More
Back in June of last year, a report in The Washington Post stated that the U.S. Department of Justice had begun a probe looking into the hiring practices of some of tech’s biggest companies. The probe was at its early stages at that point, but they were specifically looking into if any companies had agreements in place not to recruit one another’s workers. In August of last year, we reported that two of those companies, Apple and Google, did have such an agreement in place — and we even obtained an email that seemed to confirm it. Neither Google nor Apple responded to our request for a comment on the issue. Of course, they couldn’t sidestep the DoJ so easily. And today, the government is announcing a settlement on the issue.
Specifically, the DoJ is saying it is settling with six companies — Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar — ensuring that they will not enter into no solicitation agreements for employees going forward. In the complaint and settlement proposal they’re filing today, the DoJ is saying their findings indicate that there were agreements in place between a mixture of these companies over the years that prevented poaching. Here’s how they outlined it: → Read More
Disruption happens. If you are a startup, you try to be the disruptor. But what if you are an established company with billions of dollars in revenue? Then you try to create a culture of innovation that rides the wave of change before it leaves your company behind. The trick is to know when to catch that wave. Next week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Intuit founder Scott Cook and GE’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer Beth Comstock will sit down to share with the audience how they keep innovation humming at scale.
They will be joining other speakers including John Doerr, Michael Moritz, Barry Diller, Zynga’s Mark Pincus, HP’s Todd Bradley, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi, and Twitter’s Jason Goldman. (See agenda here, buy tickets here). → Read More
It looks like Intuit just acquired Cha-Ching, a Mac web app and iPhone app to help consumers manage their personal finance. According to the site of Midnight Apps, the developer of Cha-Ching, “The Cha-Ching team has merged with Intuit and will continue to provide you great design, useful features and incredible products as part of the Intuit Personal Finance Group.” See update below.
Cha-Ching appears to have been taken down from the App store. Similar to Mint.com (which Intuit acquired last year for $170 million), Cha-Ching’s Mac and iPhone apps allow users to keep track of daily transactions and bank accounts. You can schedule bills and payments, set budgets and upload receipts. → Read More
Quicken Online users have known for some time that the product they love would be terminated this year. With the shiny new Mint.com acquisition on board it was only a matter of time before they figured out that one of the two competing products would have to go. The thought was to merge the best features of both into one new product.
By February that idea had been changed. The new plan was to turn Quicken Online off at a set date and then merge all those users over to Mint: → Read More
Nobody likes doing their taxes, which is why an upcoming iPhone app from Intuit called SnapTax is so genius. As you can see from the exclusive sneak peek demo video below, the app lets you snap a picture of your W2 form with your iPhone and automatically fills in your tax return. The app uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to translate the images into words and numbers, which it then uploads into a light version of Intuit’s TurboTax software. The tax filers then correct any mistakes, enter additional data not on the W2 (such as interest income), answers a few more questions, and they are done. They can even file electronically from their iPhone. → Read More
