IPhone/IPad Credit Card Swipe

Question

Hi,

I want to develop an application for iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) that has the ability to interface to a credit card swipe.

There are a bunch of offerings (PaySabre, Square, etc.) that are a combination of a service and a device. For my purposes, I want to be able to purchase just a device that has an API etc. that I can develop my application with.

Ideally, the device would (1) use the doc (2) have an API (3) have the ability to read magnetic card swipe data (4) optional but prefered include a bar code reader. (Yes, I know you can read barcodes with the camera but its not as fast as using a real scanner.

Anyone know where I can buy such a device for development (and later) production purposes?

Answer 1

Better yet... why don't you use the camera capabilities on the phone to just read the card and do it that way? I'm sure you can get API access to a service, but the method of OCR would have to be good. Potentially could offload to a server (or just eat the user's battery, who cares)

I think the thing to consider is the development cost vs the usability result depending on the direction and most importantly, the user of the product. An internal usage for an iphone a card reader would be great, but if you were looking at commercially using it, i'd say the development of the OCR for the card number is where it's at.

Good luck!

Answer 2

Consider this device from Macally called SwipeIt http://www.macally.com/EN/Product/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=330