The business will be a rival, and was just opened under the name Affirm.
Co-founder of PayPal, Max Levchin, has just announced the launch of a business that will be a direct rival to the mobile payments segment of the company, which will be called Affirm.
This new company will add itself to the rapidly growing and highly competitive smartphone based marketplace.
The technology that is being offered through Affirm is meant to assist shoppers in completing mobile payments more quickly and easily when making purchases online by way of their devices such as smartphones and tablets, says the official website of the company. At the moment, eBay’s PayPal is the online payment leader, but it is facing growing competition from startups that are making their way into the mcommerce space.
Affirm is concentrating on streamlining mobile payments for a far faster checkout process.
The goal of the company is to help to decrease the amount of information that needs to be typed in when making a purchase over a small device such as a smartphone. Entering credit card numbers, shipping addresses, and other data can be time consuming and frustrating when using a very small screen or a touchscreen typing pad.
Affirm has claimed to have reduced the process of making a purchase online so that it involves two simply taps on the screen of a smartphone. The first is to actually choose Affirm on the website of the participating merchant, and the second is to actually confirm the order itself. At the moment, the identity of the user is confirmed through Facebook. Therefore, there will be a third step that must be taken for first time users, which involves having to log in to their Facebook accounts and then giving permission to use the Affirm app.
Levchin was one of PayPal’s two cofounders (Peter Thiel being the other), and held the position of Chief Technology Officer for four years. After that point, the online and mobile payments company was acquired by eBay. It was Levchin who created and constructed the unique and state of the art fraud prevention and online security systems for PayPal.
This allows card readers at a point of sale to be entirely replaced by the smartphone.
Flint, a mobile payment solutions company, has taken on massive competition, such as PayPal and Square, by releasing its new app that eliminates the need for magnetic card readers, in favor of a unique new system that uses the camera on iPhones for image recognition.
The Flint app applies new algorithms for reading the numbers right off the face of a card.
With the mobile payments data collected through the device camera, a transaction can be immediately completed. The CEO of Flint, Greg Goldfarb, explained that “It doesn’t take a picture of the card.” Instead, it uses the camera feature and “It just reads the numbers, and we do that to protect consumer privacy.”
The mobile payments system has been receiving a great deal of attention and applause, particularly for a newbie.
As a first time app developer, it is the recipient of a tremendous amount of positive attention. This is due to the unique tack that it has taken in the development of its mobile payments system and the marketing efforts that it has made to encourage adoption and use. For instance, it allows users to link an account to the Facebook page for their business. This gives customers who have made a purchase the opportunity to create testimonials that will be posted directly onto that page, as well as on their own social network wall.
At the moment, the app is exclusive only to iOS devices. Many in the mobile payments industry are keeping a close watch on this new addition to the marketplace, as they are keen to see how it stands up against a competition that is made up of some well established giants in the transaction domain.
So far, it is receiving positive attention due to its ability to quickly process mobile payments. Retailers like that a dongle is not required in order to make it work, and the free app allows them to begin accepting payments very soon after downloading. However, the primary drawback that has been pointed out is that it currently feels as though it is a step slower than the old fashioned method of swiping a card through a traditional reader.
The business will be a rival, and was just opened under the name Affirm.