Card.io purchase works out PayPal's mobile arm

Transaction giant PayPal added another tool to its arsenal for occasional merchants this week with the acquisition of San Francisco startup Card.io. The firm develops an application that enabled users to capture credit card information using the camera on a smartphone.

As with carrier billing pioneer Zong, which PayPal acquired this time last year, the company seems more interested in the talent than the tech, although PayPal is working on integrating Card.io’s tool into its own mobile app.

“The card.io team is joining PayPal for the same reasons that the Zong team was excited to join PayPal last year –  to get the opportunity to work on projects that will accelerate innovation at a scale that’s just not possible at a startup,” said Hill Ferguson, VP of global product, PayPal.

Back in March Paypal named entrepreneur and founder of Zong, David Marcus, as its president.

In 2011 PayPal processed $118bn in transactions, including $4bn over mobile. That number is set to top $7bn in 2012.

In related news, mobile transactions firm Monitise issued a trading update via the London stock market, saying that it expects revenues will more than double for the third successive year when it publishes full-year results in September.

“Monitise’s full-year 2012 revenues are expected to be approximately $53m (£34m), nearly two and a half times the $22m (£14m) reported last year. Total Monitise registered customers are approaching 16 million, three and a half times the level seen at the time of Monitise’s full-year results in September 2011,” the company said.

Visa recently took a 15 per cent stake in the Mobile Money Network (MMN)—a joint venture between Monitise, Best Buy Europe and Carphone Warehouse, and telecoms entrepreneur Charles Dunstone, who is present as a private investor. MMN aims to bring a platform for bank-grade mobile shopping to the mass market with a mobile checkout offering, Simply Tap, which allows customers to identify and purchase a product on their mobile via advertising, in-store or online channels, and have it delivered.