PayAnywhere Giving Away EMV Credit Card Readers

Recently, PayAnywhere announced a move that might best be described as a masterstroke for anyone looking to get hands on that sweet, sweet small business credit card traffic. It was offering up Bluetooth credit card reader dongles that complied with the Europay / Mastercard / Visa (EMV) standard, and with this move, allowed a horde of non-compliant businesses to advance boldly into the modern age of credit cards.

PayAnywhere is making the readers available to all new PayAnywhere merchants at no charge, a move which will likely get a lot of businesses paying attention. The readers are designed to work with Apple and Android devices, and both businesses’ app stores will have the necessary app to run the reader waiting for free download.

PayAnywhere isn’t just offering the free readers, though, as it offers a slate of programs to help get users in the door. Those who sign up with PayAnywhere get access to next-day funding as well as real-time analytics, letting merchants get their money faster and learn more about their businesses in the process. That improves the chance they’ll make more money down the line. There’s also US-based customer service, which helps ensure the smoothest experience.

North American Bancard—PayAnywhere’s parent company—president and CEO Marc Gardner commented “We know the importance of making sure our merchants have a fast, reliable and secure payments solution. Because our everyday focus is putting our merchants first, we wanted to give merchants a card reader that offers the ability for secure, EMV transactions – protecting them from costly chargebacks and fraudulent purchases.”

For many small businesses out there, the costs of making the jump to EMV acceptance was just too high a cost to pay, even with a new liability focus putting the weight on said small businesses. Many just didn’t do that much volume to justify the costs of changing over, or weren’t that concerned about what little fraud there might be.

Not so long ago, that analysis wasn’t exactly invalid; costs to change over to EMV could be substantial, and for businesses that didn’t do much credit card business, tough to justify. With a move like this, however, PayAnywhere has just improved its fortunes substantially and may be poised to pull in quite a few small businesses interested in fraud protection on a budget.