Free at last. Breadcrumb, Groupon’s payments platform, has ditched its $15 fee for credit card readers. Breadcrumb is Groupon’s payment system for businesses that includes a retail POS, as well as a POS just for restaurants called Breadcrumb PRO. Breadcrumb Payments — Groupon’s version of Square — is the product that ditched the card reader charge. Breadcrumb payments has long offered merchants $5,000 of complimentary transactions. A request for comment from Breadcrumb has not yet been answered. Groupon launched Breadcrumb last fall. Novel payments startups in recent years — most notably Square — have been built by offering free hardware. Famously, the Square dongle remains free — at least from Square itself. Retailers that distribute the dongle charge money. Target, for example, sells it for $9.99. After the first $5,000 of complimentary transactions, Breadcrumb costs 1.8% and $0.15 per swipe for Visa/Mastercard/Discover charges, while American Express charges cost 2.3% and $0.15 per “keyed” or card-not-present transactions. Square, meanwhile, charges 2.75% no matter which card is used. Square charges 3.5% and $0.15 for manually keyed transactions.
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