In June 2009, Apple allowed independent developers to write software for the iPhone. At that time, there was only one iPhone size and the iPad had not yet been released. The smartphone market had just started to take off and Apple was allowing developers to participate in its ecosystem.
Having had prior experience developing credit card authorization systems for businesses such as JSpell, Cliff decided that he would write one of the very first credit card acceptance systems for the new iPhone platform. The product at first was named iMerchant, however the name was later changed to Credit Card Reader. Credit Card Reader provided a simple way for merchants to accept credit cards on their iPhone. The capabilities included sale, refund, void, transaction history, signature capture and more.
Cliff partnered with a merchant account company called iTransact. iTransact would take on the responsibility of setting up small and medium sized businesses with a merchant account and Cliff's company, PhoneTransact, would take care of providing the new merchant with credit card acceptance capabilities on their iPhone.
In August of 2010, Cliff released one of the very first credit card swiper devices that was compatible with the iPhone. This gained national attention of CNN and various trade publications. It was a glorious achievement to beat Square to the market as a completely self funded entity.
How does an iPhone credit card processing system work?
- User selects the transaction type
- User enters a dollar amount
- User swipes a credit card or hand keys the credit card number
- User presses the Authorize button in the application
- The application sends the information to the cardholder's bank for approval
Credit Card Reader is still used today by thousands of merchants and processes thousands of transactions per month. For more information about Credit Card Reader please visit PhoneTransact.com. To continue to learn more about the software that Cliff has written please visit the other pages of this website.