Erply is taking on Square, Intuit and VeriFone with a new mobile credit card reader for iOS devices, reports Leena Rao for TechCrunch. The $50 reader connects to an iPad and transmits a customer’s encrypted credit card data to its own point of sale and inventory management software suite to process payments, which means a retailer doesn’t have to use different software. In the next few months the reader, which is NFC-enabled for mobile transactions, will be available for use with an iPhone.

Erply’s 1.9% transaction fee is slightly less than Square, VeriFone and Intuit’s fees, but Rao points out that choosing between the vendors is still tricky. For one thing, Square’s reader and software is free, whereas Erply’s software is anywhere from $70 to $1000 per month. Alternately, Intuit’s GoPayment reader integrates with the ever-popular Quickbooks accounting software–an important feature for some small businesses.

Read more at TechCrunch ^[1].