Payware Mobile Enterprise From VeriFone Puts A New Wrinkle In Mobile Payment

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The mobile payment processing market is getting a lot tougher every day, folks, with new competitors emerging looking to get a slice of that still hefty retail market. And the crew out at VeriFone have a new weapon in their turf war thanks to the newly-developed Payware Mobile Enterprise system.

The VeriFone Payware Mobile Enterprise system basically takes any tablet–from iPad to Blackberry Playbook and beyond–and allows you to use it to collect payments anywhere, at any time. It’s really little more than a magnetic card reader and an accompanying app, but this one’s geared toward bigger businesses (there’s even a calculator out there that shows that smaller payments at bigger volume is usually Square’s turf, while VeriFone is often the better deal on fewer and bigger payments). It even goes so far as to support PIN verification and NFC payments, which means that it’ll play nice with Google Wallet, even if Google Wallet won’t be seeing a big release for at least the next six months.

And of course, if you’ve been following the whole mobile payments battle royale, you’ve probably already figured out that this means an interesting new wrinkle in the whole issue. Square (who has only recently allied itself with Visa) has been gearing itself toward the small business, the roadside stand and the flea market vendor and the like. For VeriFone to go after bigger business is an important move for them. Instead of having the two of them fight over the same pie, they’re basically going to go after two separate and somewhat smaller pies, but be the main competitor in the field.

Indeed, this is looking like a smart idea. Square’s done great things with the “plug this into your iPhone and start making sales” approach, while VeriFone can clearly go after the “you’ve got hundreds of transactions to process every day and we can help, securely and smoothly” approach.

So what about you guys? Anyone out there use Square or VeriFone in their small business applications? Or do you think this would be a great way to perk up your next garage sale? The comments section is waiting for you, so head on down and tell us what you think!