Mobile Payment Solution LevelUp Now Seeing $1M Per Month In Transactions; Launches API

With increasing smartphone adoption and with users in turn becoming more and more comfortable using their mobile devices to do things traditionally reserved for the Web or desktops, every industry is going mobile. But, when you consider the effect mobile technology has still yet to make on transactions -- ye olde exchange of money/goods -- there is a huge opportunity for disruption. Carriers, OEMs, startups -- everyone knows this. Three, five years from now, mobile payment solutions has the potential to be a massive business. Yet, as things stand right now, carriers and mobile OSes are still finding it hard to come to terms, with users suffering as a result.]]>

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Google-Backed Corduro Promises Even Lower Mobile Payment Fees Than Square

Mobile payments are coming, and there are many paths being beaten to get them to our phones. Google-backed mobile payments startup Corduro launches this week with a combined mobile wallet/payments processor for Android and the iPhone (which will be available in the respective app stores later this week). Like Square, Corduro is primarily a way for merchants to take payments on mobile devices. But it has a few twists. One is pricing. In some cases, it can be up to 30 percent cheaper for merchants in processing fees than regular credit card transactions (and even beats Square slightly). If someone is paying with debit bank card with a Visa or Mastercard logo on it—these already make up more than half of all credit card transactions in the U.S.—Corduro then reroutes those payments over the cheaper debit networks similar to the ones that ATMs use. ]]>

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