Last August, Silicon Alley darling Venmo, a mobile app that lets you split bills and pay friends, was acquired by Braintree, a PayPal competitor, for $26.2 million. At the time, Braintree emphasized the shift towards mobile commerce. And it looks like having a consumer-facing brand like Venmo is helping in that department.

Today, they announced the launch of Venmo Touch, which should help lower the barrier to buying things on mobile by avoiding the hassle of having to enter your credit card information with every new app . . . as long as it's part of the Braintree family.

Enter your credit card info on the TaskRabbit app (a Braintree client), for example, and an option pops up to "save card with Venmo." If you opt in to the service and then open the HotelTonight app (another Braintree client), it will ask if you want to use the same card on file. All you need to enter is the CVV code.

Of course, the mobile payments market is plagued by fragmentation. For example, how is the average consumer supposed to know that Best Buy and Walmart are on the same network, whereas Duane Reade is with Google Wallet and Starbucks is with Square?

Braintree has an advantage there because it happens to be a popular payment platform with the kind of apps you might actually make purchases on. Venmo Touch is debuting in private beta on HotelTonight, TaskRabbit, Wrapp, and more and Braintree expects that other clients like Uber, Fab, and Livingsocial will take advantage of it, as they have one-click check out.

Now that Venmo Touch has launched maybe cofounder Andrew Kortina can finally get some sleep?

This guy. (Photo: Screenrant)

Not only is Starbucks accepting payments via Square, the coffee conglomerate is now also selling the Square credit card reader for $10 at its retail locations. [New York Times]

Spotify has suspended its music download service in the U.K. Users can still stream music, but are sent to an unhelpful FAQ page when they attempt to purchase it. [Pocket-Lint]

Kim Dotcom says the U.S. "planted" evidence, encouraging him to keep copyrighted files on the Megaupload servers but then punishing him when he did so. [Ars Technica]

That indie Steve Jobs film, that will star Ashton Kutcher and be an inevitable flop that we will still watch anyway, is slated for release in April. Who wants to go with us? [Wall Street Journal]

The New York state comptroller is suing microchip company Qualcomm for data about its political expenditures with the hopes it can bring more transparency to corporate political spending. [New York Times]

Mr. Taub and Mr. Schonfeld

The Credit Card Killers

With an ever-crowded financial tech market and companies like PayPal and Google Wallet elbowing for industry dominance, the race to kill the credit card is heating up. But among the standouts is Iowa-based mobile payment startup Dwolla, thanks to an innovative pricing structure and a growing New York presence helmed by Michael Schonfeld and Alex Taub. Dwolla has raised money from two New York venture capital firms, Union Square Ventures and Thrive Capital. (Josh Kushner, a Thrive principal, is also part-owner of Observer Media Group.)

Much like PayPal, Dwolla seeks to disrupt the traditional money-wiring business and enable users to send payments with ease. Users set up a Dwolla profile, link it directly to their bank account, and can then instantly send money to friends and businesses through an iPhone or Android app.

The company also processes bank-to-bank transactions, eradicating the need for slow and costly credit card processing. “We’re building a human network based on how we think the future of payments will work,” CEO Ben Milne told Business Insider. “The current model needs to be blown up.”

PayPal, Dwolla’s main competitor, is far more established and is a trusted brand name in online payments, but its fee structure makes it expensive to use. Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn’t take a percentage of each transaction, instead charging a 25 cent fee for any payment over $10 (under $10 is free), making it much cheaper for businesses and consumers.

“PayPal is a pioneer, but it can only innovate so much on the backs of these 40- or 50-year-old networks that they’re using,” Mr. Milne told The Observer. “Dwolla is a new conduit to move money in a better way that anyone can use.”

Next: Mike Karnjanaprakorn, Skillshare: The Principal of New York

Back to the beginning

America runs on smartphones, more like. (Photo: flickr.com/robertbanh)

Now that big fancy Starbucks has its Square-enabled mobile payments system, you didn't think Dunkin Donuts was going to allow itself to be one-upped like some sort of country cousin, did you? Certainly not!

GigaOm reports that today, the Massachusetts-based purveyor of superior coffee and slightly stale baked goods is launching its very own mobile payments app, for those of you looking to download something new to the fifth screen of your smartphone.. How it works:

When it comes time to pay, users select which virtual card they want to use and the app presents a QR code, which is scanned by an employee. The amount is deducted from their balance immediately after the purchase.

Dunkin Donuts’ mobile payment system, which is available at most of its 7,000 U.S. locations, is similar in execution to the Starbucks mobile app, which also works with virtual cards and barcodes. But unlike the Starbucks mobile app, Dunkin Donuts users can also send mobile gift cards to each other via the app. Users can send a gift card up to $100 to a friend via Facebook, email or text message.

Also included: Nutritional facts, to remind you that their muffins actually have more calories than most of their donuts. (Seriously.)

This news comes the day after a group of retailers include Walmart, Best Buy, and 7-Eleven announced plans for their own system for mobile payments. Mobile payments for erry'body!

Still a mystery: how any of these apps are, in any way, faster than just swiping a credit card.

Rather than go the Starbucks route and partner with Square or follow other national retailers (like Duane Reade, RadioShack, Banana Republic, etc.) into Google Wallet, the group is going rogue, arguing that Google and other telecom providers--AT&T and T-Mobile have a payments app called Isis; Verizon and Vodafone have one as well--don't understand customers like they do. The retailers behind MCX point out that they have a combined $1 trillion in annual sales and "serve nearly every smartphone user in the U.S."

Terry Scully, Target's president of financial and retail services told the New York Times:

"What we are looking for is a broad, seamless experience across all retail formats," Scully said.

Of course, the idea of downloading a different mobile payments app depending on the store hardly feels seamless. At this rate, consumers will have to keep track of which imperceptible coalition each retailer belongs to, as though they're a bunch of politically-aligned nation-states. Not to mention the discomfort of uploading your credit card info it each. As the Journal notes:

The proliferation of mobile-payments systems might confuse consumers, skeptics say. But participants say the rival efforts reflect a predicament: Each industry needs the other to make mobile payments succeed, but each group wants to lead the way.

Even among people with a cellphone and a bank account, only 11 percent used mobile payments last year, according to a survey from Gartner. However, a recent report from Juniper Research says mobile payments is expected to almost quadruple to $1.3 trillion annually by 2017. Between now and then, a little federating might do the industry good.

Wal-Mart (flickr.com/Monochrome)

So, a decade from now, it's going to be all smartphone-enabled mobile wallets, right? Children being born right this minute will look at good old greenbacks the way today's teenagers think of VHS cassettes. Well, Wal-Mart apparently isn't so sure about that, because the big box behemoth has just launched an online "Pay with Cash" option specifically targeted to consumers who don't have debit or credit cards. That's a bigger market than you might assume.

Walmart.com president and CEO Joel Anderson told All Things D:

The fact that only 15 percent of our transactions are done in the form of credit at our stores means there’s a large percentage of Wal-Mart customers who are dependent on cash to transact online. We definitely think it is a big opportunity.

Nor is Wal-Mart alone in its interest in the underbanked, with companies like Pay Near Me, Green Dot, and Netspend all offering solutions. So let's not shut down Bureau of Engraving and Printing just yet.

As expected, PayPal released its own version of Square's mobile payments service today. Like Square, "PayPal Here" uses a small dongle that can be plugged into an iPhone's headphone jack as a credit card swiper. Merchants punch in the required amount and customers can choose whether to swipe their card, use the camera to read the credit card number, or even scan a check. Also like Square, the app boasts tracking features for small businesses and allows for direct payment based on location.

However, it's super hard to focus on the pros/cons and whether the eBay subsidiary can squash Square, when all we can picture is Dwight Schrute's moonpie face as he unveiled the similiarly-hued-and-shaped Saber Pyramid.  We're not the only ones who noticed. Verge commenters couldn't stop knee-slapping over the likeness.

Unlike The Office's ill-conceived non-innovation--The tablet computer that slips through your hands!--PayPal's dongle seems to be utilitarian. "The design includes a 'wing' on a hinge to 'stabilize' the reader on the phone when swiping a card," noted the Verge. PayPal's flat rate of 2.7 percent also undercuts Square's 2.75 percent. If you use PayPal's free debit card, however, a 1 percent cash back offer brings the effective rate down to 1.7 percent, the company claims. What's more, adds the Verge, its "app can be used to accept any credit card, debit card, and also track cash — 'any form of payment short of barter.'"

But Square may still have the advantage when it comes to the back of a taxi cab game. It doesn't look like PayPal has come out with an iPad version . . . yet.

When they do, may we recommend the sales pitch stylings of one Jim Halpert?

The service hopes to revolutionize commerce by building a mobile marketplace for real-time, local transactions. Say it's raining out and you've got to leave the office for an interview, but you forgot your umbrella at home. Zaarly lets you make an offer to pay for an umbrella delivery.

In a lot of ways this makes it similar to Craigslist, except that it is the buyers who are priming the pump and the sellers who are responding to posts.

The service has had a heady, nine week run to date. Co-founder Bo Fishback was President of the Kaufmann Foundation which he describes as, "Pretty much the best job on earth. I gave away $100 million a year to start-ups."

A five-time founder himself, Fishback pitched the concept for Zaarly at LA start-up weekend, thinking it would make a fun, 48-hour project. Instead it took off after receiving celebrity endorsements, $1 million in funding and a ton of press at SXSW, where it handled $10,000 worth of transactions in 24 hours.

Now the service is gearing up to launch, probably within the next couple weeks, and New York will be its biggest market. "Wall Street is full of bankers who have a lot of money and a shortage of time," says Fishback. "For a city full of part-time hustlers, this is going to change everything."

Success during the tech orgy of SXSW is no guarantee Zaarly will find mainstream traction, but the buzz amongst local VCs  is that Zaarly will nab at least eight figures for its next round. For now the focus is identifying communities within the starter cities with a wealth of buyers and sellers to match. Early A/B testing is also helping Zaarly to find its price point, somewhere between 5-10 percent of each transaction.

The kind of transactions that occur on Zaarly is a top concern. The full time team of nine will be supported by hundreds of outsourced staffers who can manually review postings for offending offers. "This would be an amazing tool if we allowed people to sell sex and drugs, but having learned from Craigslist," says Fishback. "We are planning to be very aggressive in keeping illicit activity off our platform."

Today Leena Rao broke the news that the start-up, which keeps offices in New York and San Fran, announced another big partnership, a strategic investment from Visa.

Square offers a free app and device that turns any iPhone, Android or iPad into a credit card reader. Its aim is to help small merchants who couldn't afford the overhead of a traditional credit card arrangement.

It's not clear exactly what Visa hopes to gain from this deal. Square already features the brand prominently on its homepage, but obviously accepts all major credit cards. Perhaps Visa is looking for the inside track on new technologies as the field of mobile payments rapidly expands. That seemed to be the drift of a gushy blog post Visa wrote about Square back in February.

The investment is certainly a nice boost for Square, showing that a major player in the industry it is trying to disrupt believes in its security and wants to more closely align its future with the upstart.

This afternoon Dorsey tweeted out, "If you want a free reader mailed to you, download the @Square app. If you want one now, check if your local Apple store has it in stock."

For anyone not willing to wait on the mail, the Square card is selling at Apple for $9.95. That's a big difference from offering the device for free. But it probably won't be putting any cash in the company's pocket. Square is offering a $10 credit with each purchase. Since it is sharing the retail revenue with Apple, Square is probably taking a bigger loss on these retail transactions than the units they ship for free.

The hope is that the increased visibility from Apple will help Square get to widespread adoption before other players in the mobile payments game. One big boost is that Apple can offer in store demos and classes on Square, giving nervous merchants a chance to spend some time hands on with the product.

On the flipside, the Apple store is mostly about consumer electronics, not devices for small business.