Amazon’s new Local Register is a small card reader designed to plug into the headphone jack of smartphones and tablets for efficient payments, especially appealing to small businesses who generally accept cash only.
Amazon’s new device gives entrepreneurs and small business owners a viable and cheap option, at only $10 a card reader, to accept credit and debit card purchases from customers.
Amazon
Local Register currently works on iOS, Android and Kindle Fire devices, essentially the three major players for utilizing this type of technology.
The new reader from Amazon also aims to cut into the business of PayPal and Square, offering a fee of 1.75 percent per swipe payment until December 31st, 2015, while Square charges 2.75 percent and PayPal charges 2.7 percent respectively.
Amazon’s rate will eventually spike to 2.5 percent but that’s still cheaper than its two main competitors.
