Intuit Launches Its Square Competitor In The UK

Financial software giant Intuit offers a Square-competitor, GoPayment, which allows users in the U.S. and Canada to accept payments via a reader that attaches to any smartphone. Today, Intuit is expanding across the pond with the launch of a mobile card reader in the UK; however, the offering has a different name – Intuit Pay.

Intuit Pay is essentially GoPayment but tailored for the UK market and payments network. Via a chip and PIN card reader that attaches to a smartphone and a dedicated mobile app, Intuit Pay allows users to accept credit cards for payments. Additionally, the package comes with the ability to process card payments online.

The company cautions that this is just a pilot, and the service will roll out more broadly to UK users soon.

As for why the UK version of the service has a different name, the company says that it encountered legal issues when naming the UK version GoPayment. Intuit says the service works with chip and pin payments from MasterCard, Visa and Mastro cards, and that all data is encrypted. And Intuit Pay meets the unique requirements of the U.K. payments industry.

The company most recently merged GoPayment with its traditional POS software, QuickBooks, allowing the two products to communicate with each other, syncing both inventory and financial data from PC to mobile or vice versa. The ability to sync between financial services products and payments services is one of the advantages of using GoPayment/Intuit Pay, says Intuit.

Intuit’s Chris Hylen explains that the company plans to localize the offering for other international markets.

For mobile payments offerings like PayPal Here, Square, GoPayments and others, international represents a huge growth potential. Square just launched in Canada and PayPal Here is available in Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and Canada. Launching abroad can be complicated because of security and regulatory environments, as well as incorporating additional payments systems, like chip readers. And it’s unclear yet whether the first service to launch in an international market ends up being the most popular mobile payments gateway for businesses.