Groupon Moves Into Credit Card Payments

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Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) has long been known for its daily deals and emails sent en masse to the point of annoying a large section of its customer base. It’s for the latter reason above that Groupon has been moving into mobile to offer its deals by means of customers pulling them through their smartphones and tablets rather than having them pushed at them by Groupon.

Groupon Moves Into Credit Card Payments

Groupon moving away from deals

Having given the ax to its co-founder and CEO in February due to his struggles taking the company public, Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) has also undergone a transformation in its sales, moving away from deals and offering low-price goods everyday. Groupon has also shown a willingness to become more involved with brick and mortar stores and today saw an announcement that shows just that.

The “Daily Deals” business which made Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) famous was bound to slow down for a variety of reasons. The novelty wore off after a while, but as important, or perhaps more importantly, Groupon’s initial success gave birth to thousands of companies that felt that they could compete with Groupon. It is for this reason that Groupon began selling its own merchandise as well as getting into the restaurant reservation game as well.

Last year, the company also began offering dongles that allow both Android and iOS smartphone and tablet users to accept credit cards, joining PayPal, Square and other companies in this area.

Groupon’s new credit card terminals

Today saw Groupon begin to offer more card-processing options by helping merchants configure their existing card-swiping hardware to be on the Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) payments network, known as Breadcrumb. Groupon is already selling iPad stands and printers to merchants in order to free up space taken up my more traditional cash registers.

The new credit-card terminals, made by Verifone, will cost $150, or $15 a month for one year, Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) said. Additionally they will charge merchants 1.8% on all transactions on top of a $0.15 fee per card swipe.

In unrelated news, Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) also announced its acquisition of San Francisco start-up Plumfare earlier this week. Plumfare is a restaurant discovery app that allows diners to take photos of their food in the hopes that their friends might gift them part of their meal. Plumfare takes a small percentage of gifted items. No terms of the deal were announced in the statement today.

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