Groupon Expands Push Into Payments
Groupon, known for its emailed coupon offers, said it will begin selling traditional credit-card-swiping hardware to merchants as it pushes deeper into bricks-and-mortar commerce.
As growth in daily deals slows, Groupon has been expanding into new lines of business — selling merchandise and enabling restaurant reservations, for example. The company began offering iPhone and Android smartphone dongles last year in a bid to capture a piece of mobile payments, pitting it against PayPal, Square and a host of other rivals.
Groupon said it will help merchants configure their existing card-swiping hardware to be on the Groupon payments network, known as Breadcrumb. Like some of its competitors, Groupon sells iPad stands and printers that it hopes merchants will use instead of bulkier registers and other equipment at checkout counters.
Category: News
