Quote from: benjamindees on April 06, 2012, 05:04:52 AM

Quote from: Haplo on April 05, 2012, 11:25:49 AM

Do paypal and dwolla have physical POS methods that don't rely on VISA or mastercard? Maybe I'm missing something. That canadian mint thing sounds like a citizen tracking collar to me. It'll be a disaster of human rights and a disaster of identity theft. I don't think Canada is really the ideal market for bitcoin anyway.

Dwolla basically has mobile web payments, so I guess there isn't any hardware involved. And Paypal apparently uses standard mag stripe cards. So perhaps not.

At present, all physical POS methods rely on the Visa/MC networks.

Dwolla uses the ACH to move money among bank accounts. Eventually they could move into prepaid/debit cards. If they do they would run their payments on the existing VISA/MC payments networks.

Paypal also uses ACH as its base. Their payment cards run on the VISA/MC networks. For vendors wishing to accept card payments, Paypal offers a private label version of ISIS or Square (not sure which) hardware. You know--those portable plastic mag strip readers that attach to cell phones enabling mobile VISA/MC payments.

One might be able to repurpose those ISIS or Square devices. They read the mag strip and send that data along with the merchant # and courtesy amount to a previously established phone number... ultimately Paypal's third party card processor's data center.