Square has a competitor now - Intuit GoPayment

I randomly tried TurboTax (owned by Intuit) this year. My friends used it. I trusted their taste, but only that it was the best of mediocre options. I was wrong. The app was amazing. One of the best apps of any kind I've ever used. The UX from the visual progress workflow to the copywriting de-stressing you out about taxes (but not getting forced-humorous), saving sessions that you time out (you're gonna time out something as long as your taxes, trust + believe)... Just everything. I know it sounds crazy, but doing my taxes was actually fun.

Anyway... I bring this up because they also own Mint, which lots of people think is pretty nice, too (but its heritage predates Intuit's purchase of it).

All I know is... I have faith in Intuit to make something truly nice. I am really rooting for Square, because I always root for disruptive upstarts, but i hope they both make slightly different variations of stuff that will help customers.

Square has an awful lot of momentum behind it and is incredibly well-executed. Distribution through the Apple store is a good example of how well they're doing.

For a large company like Intuit to launch their own service that, at least in transaction terms, is doing roughly as well (in pure transaction terms at any rate) is an achievement (IMHO). Sure they can leverage off their Quicken/QuickBooks franchises (not to mention Mint) but as Microsoft has demonstrated time and time again: you can still fail when you have a massive incumbent advantage.

Plus I like the competition. It's good for us, the consumers.

For a very small portion of transactions you get a very good rate (1.7%flat) under the new pricing (if you pay the $13/month), but tiered pricing means they can charge you the non-qualified rate whenever they want. “Non-qualified” means whatever the hell they want it to, and ultimately the vast majority of your transactions/cards will fall under that pricing tier and you’ll pay 3.7% plus 22 or 37 cents on them. (non-qual rates still have what they call an authorization fee appended to them – 22 cents or 37 cents based on what plan you choose). In our experience, typically over 70% of the transactions are non-qualified. My guess is that Intuit will give you the qualified rate for debit cards and some standard cards (but these days everyone uses rewards cards).

To be a little honest, I'm shocked that TC didn't do a little more research for this article (not to mention the huge number of other errors this article is riddled with). I just wrote a blogpost explaining this in a bit more detail: http://feefighters.com/blog/intuit-drops-per-transaction-fee...