Visa Makes A Strategic Investment In Disruptive Mobile Payments Startup Square

There is no doubt that mobile payments company Square is on a roll. The company just landed a lucrative deal selling its credit card readers in Apple’s retail stores and is growing at a fast clip. And now the company has just received a strategic investment from a giant in the credit card industry—Visa.

For background, Square offers iPhone, Android and an iPad app which allows merchants to process and manage credit card transactions with a handy little credit card swiping device that plugs into the headset/microphone jack. The device and service is the brainchild of Twitter co-founder and recently appointed product lead Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, and recently raised $27.5 million in new funding. In Q1, Square did $66 million in payment volume (the company expected $40 million) and plans to triple that in the second quarter of 2011.

So clearly, Square probably doesn’t need the cash (Square declined to reveal how much Visa invested). This is a strategic investment, and one that gives Square major clout as a payments product. Simply put, it’s a huge stamp of approval for the startup.

COO Keith Rabois tells us that the investment will not only help accelerate the business, but the partnership with Visa will help spread the word about Square to small businesses. In fact, there are currently 27 million U.S. small businesses that don’t accept credit cards currently. “The best way to grow a small business is to accept credit cards,” he explains, “Square allows these businesses to accept credit cards in minutes with minimal effort.”

He tells me that as part of the investment, a Visa executive will become an advisor to the company. Square will also be adding an exec from bank J.P. Morgan Chase (J.P. Morgan participated in Square’s Series B round) as an advisor.

So why Visa? Rabois says that while Visa is one of the giants in the industry based on reputation alone, roughly two-thirds of transactions using Square’s payments service are through Visa credit cards. He adds that over time, the partnership means that Square can work on making the payments experience better for Visa customers.

For Visa, the investment gives the company access into the innovations taking place within the company and the mobile payments industry. In February, Visa published a glowing post, praising the startup’s product as a “big deal.” Back then, it was thought that Visa could be looking to partner with the startup or even acquire it. And on Square’s homepage, the company depicts a user swiping a credit card on Square’s mobile reader using a Visa Signature card. It is telling that Square chose to feature Visa, when the reader accepts MasterCard, American Express and Discover, which are all widely used across the globe.

Visa has been steadily trying to ramp up innovation within its own payments network, launching a PayPal like payments service, and buying virtual goods monetization startup PlaySpan.

But Visa hasn’t made many investments in companies in its history (the company invested in mobile commerce security and development company Ecrio back in 2007). Mobile payments is a business that a number of players are looking to profit from, including VeriFone and Intuit, and through the investment, Visa is able to gain insight into this emerging market.

Another important angle to note in this transaction is that with the investment, Visa is standing by Square’s security as a credit card reader. Two months ago, VeriFone, which makes a competing card reader, wrote an open letter to consumers and the industry, warning users of a “gaping security hole” in mobile payments startup (and competitor) Square’s hardware. Dorsey shot back, vehemently denying the security flaw and calling out the apparent flaws in VeriFone’s argument.

Still, being charged with putting consumer card information at risk is a serious accusation and certainly not one that Square wants associated with its name. Visa’s investment in the startup certainly validates the fact that there’s no credit card fraud taking place via flaws in Square’s devices and system.

This has certainly been an eventful first half of the year for Square. Not only has the company signed a retail deal with one of the most well-known retailers in the world, but it has raised funding from a group of marquis investors, dropped the $0.15 per transaction charge for businesses using the mobile payments service, debuted a massive billboard in Times Square, and now has a strategic partner in one of the biggest credit card giants in the world, Visa.

So what’s next for Square? “Our product can get better,” says Rabois and he along with the rest of his staff will be doubling down on development. In fact, Square is looking to double or triple its engineering and design teams. “Reinventing payments is a difficult experience,” Rabois says. “But we have a lot of things in the works in the coming year.”

READ MORE » Visa Makes A Strategic Investment In Disruptive Mobile Payments Startup Square

Nokia makes smartphone connection to Microsoft

Nokia X6 smartphone: chief executive Stephen Elop calls the Microsoft deal a 'win-win' partnership.

Nokia, the world's biggest standalone mobile-phone company, has finally signed a deal with Microsoft worth billions of dollars which it hopes will help to reverse its falling share of the fast-growing and lucrative smartphone market.

The announcement of its plan to shift over to the software company's Windows Phone platform for its top-end smartphones came as the Finnish company set out quarterly financial results which showed continuing pressure on both its smartphone and standard mobile-phone products. Profits in the mobile division were down 17% year-on-year to €690m (£607) on revenues up 6% to €7.1bn, and overall profit down 10% to €439m on total revenues of €10.4bn, up 9%.

Although the figures were better than expected, they still contrasted poorly with Apple's spectacular results on Wednesday night, which showed its total phone revenues were $12.3bn, making the iPhone manufacturer the world's largest phone maker in sheer revenue terms.

Nokia still sells the most handsets – 108.5m in the quarter – but even that number was level with a year ago, indicating that the company is having trouble expanding its business quickly in markets such as China, India and Latin America, where it has identified the biggest potential for growth.

Apple has also creamed off the most valuable smartphone users, with average selling prices on its handsets of $660 (£400) in the latest quarter compared with €147 (£130) for Nokia's smartphones. Average prices for its phones overall have continued to drop over the past four years even while its phone volumes have remained largely static.

Nokia plans to abandon the Symbian platform currently used on its smartphones by the middle of next year and adopt Microsoft's Windows Phone because chief executive Stephen Elop – a former Microsoft executive – believes that it offers the best hope of building a sustainable platform in the fast-growing market. He called the deal "a win-win partnership" because of the complementary nature of the companies' assets.

The two companies announced the outline for the deal in London in February, after Elop had courted both Google and Microsoft, choosing between the Android mobile operating system – now the world's most-used on smartphones – and Windows Phone, which was only introduced in October 2010 and has had a lukewarm reception from customers.

Nokia shares rose 3% on news of the deal and the results, which were less bad than analysts had feared. But Elop's guidance for the forthcoming quarter indicated that the company has been hit by supply chain problems caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. "We expect a more challenging second quarter," he said, forecasting "greater impact" from the earthquake's effects than in the just-ended quarter.

Elop is expected to cut a swath through Nokia's staff following the Microsoft deal, which will remove the need for a lot of in-house software development. He said the company expects to save about €1bn by 2013 through reduced headcount. The move has been unpopular within Finland, where Nokia has about 130,000 employees.

Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura, said: "It's a bit of a no-score draw really. You've got a solid set of numbers, but guidance is bad. But it's not the cataclysm that had been feared. We were worried they might miss second-quarter revenue by 10-15% because we'd heard numbers out of Asia were bad."

Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight, said: "Performance was largely consistent with expectations and there will be a sigh of relief that there appeared to be no considerable downturn at the low-end to compound Nokia's difficulties in the high-tier. Finalisation of the agreement with Microsoft means Nokia can now focus on execution."

View the original article here

READ MORE » Nokia makes smartphone connection to Microsoft

Greplin’s Chrome Extension Now Makes Gmail Search Infinitely Better

Gmail is arguably the best web-based email client out there, but it’s far from perfect. Just navigating your inbox (particularly when it’s a big one) can be an exercise in frustration… and then there’s Gmail Search, which is just painful. Wait times of 30-40 seconds aren’t unheard of, to the point that it’s becoming the butt of jokes (what can you do in the time it takes to run a Gmail search?)
Enter Greplin, the Sequoia-funded startup that’s looking to search all of your online data from a single search box. Today the company is upgrading its Chrome browser extension to take that search box with you, and they’re starting with Gmail. Put another way: they’re finally making Gmail Search work well.
To get set up, you’ll first need to install the plugin and sign up for a Greplin account, then connect that account to your Gmail (and any other supported services you might use, like Facebook and Evernote). Next, log into your Gmail as usual and you’ll notice a subtle change: the search box will have a small, grayed-out magnifying glass. Click it, and you’ll activate Greplin search.
In my testing so far, Greplin search has bested the default results in almost every way. They’re faster (they take less than a second to pop up, as opposed to the 20+ seconds you can run into on Gmail). And once you’ve started searching, you’ll notice that tweaks to your query show up in real-time as you type each character, the same way they do on Google Instant. And it shows results for partial-word matches (“Tech” would match for both “Technology” and “TechCrunch”) — which Gmail doesn’t do. The one thing I noticed that Greplin doesn’t do yet is spelling correction, but partial matching is often more helpful, anyway.
This is Gmail search the way it should be.
Of course, there’s one possible issue for those of you who are concerned about your privacy — because Greplin needs to index your emails for quick searching, it has to actually store your messages. Most people probably don’t care about this, and the service has everything riding on its ability to keep your data secure, but it’s something to keep in mind.
I spoke to cofounder Daniel Gross and asked him how exactly Greplin could return these results so much faster than Google could. Gross said he didn’t have much insight into the way Google runs things, but points out that Greplin is focusing exclusively on search, while the Gmail team has to spread its attention across a much bigger product.
I also asked him how much delay there was before new email messages would appear in my Greplin index (which is an important factor when dealing with email). He urged me to take the ‘Greplin Challenge ‘and test it for myself. So I did — a message with 500k of attachments showed up in my search results within a second of receiving it. Not too shabby.
Greplin’s Chrome extension launched earlier this week, but this Gmail functionality is new — and it’s going to get even better. Gross didn’t give any specifics, but it sounds like Greplin users will be able to ‘replace’ search boxes on more services in the future.

READ MORE » Greplin’s Chrome Extension Now Makes Gmail Search Infinitely Better

Venuetastic Makes Booking An Event Space A Breeze

Finding the right venue space within budget, location and size constraints can be the toughest part of planning an event. And the most time-intensive part of the process is doing the due-diligence around booking a space, from finding contacts to calling event managers to find info about size, price, to signing contracts and more. While hiring an event planner can save some of the strain caused by this responsibility, this can be an expensive undertaking. Today, Y Combinator-backed Venuetastic is launching as an easy to use event venue marketplace. It’s essentially a comparison shopping site for booking event venues.

Venuetastic lists features of event space, ranging from those catered towards corporate events, to wedding spaces. People can search for venues and compare them (based on capacity, location, price, type of space, and type of event), and bookmark venues that are promising.

For venues, Venuetastic is free to list on the site and free to use it. Venues can upload all the information about their space, including photos, videos and more. And Venuetastic essentially automates the booking process, and coordinates contract signing, and payments. The startup makes money by charging a commission on bookings.

The startup’s co-founders Helen Belogolova and Christine Yen (this is the first all-female startup Y Combinator has funded), tell me that the site also aims to bring businesses who don’t specifically work in events (i.e. art galleries) with non-traditional, large commercial space into the mix to provide more options for consumers and potentially give businesses a new revenue stream.

While Venuetastic is initially focusing on the Bay Area, the startup already covers a vast number of potential spaces in the region with over 500 venues listed. And the company has already helped coordinate event space for a number of startups. For example, DropBox recently used Venuetastic to coordinate a arty, explaining that using the service “allowed us to have the free time to focus on making it a good time.”

Venuetastic faces competition from Evenues and Cvent. But event planning and booking is such a large market, there is room for a number of players in this space.

READ MORE » Venuetastic Makes Booking An Event Space A Breeze