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Financial services group Absa has announced that it has entered into an agreement with Thumbzup, a South African payments company, for the launch of its plug-in device named The Payment Pebble

This device will let businesses and entrepreneurs accept on-the-go debit or credit card payments across South Africa using their smartphones or tablets.

Absa confirmed that, as part of the agreement, it would provide its Payment Pebble as a value-added service to all small business owners and merchants on-the-go from early 2013.

The Payment Pebble will offer improvements to card readers currently available in the market that get attached to mobile phones to process merchant payments, said Absa.

“The Pebble will be a small card-reader device that would be plugged into a 3.5mm audio input on any mobile smartphone or tablet and include a mobile app,” the firm revealed. 

Once plugged into a smartphone or tablet, Absa informed, its Pebble would turn into a mobile point-of-sale terminal where merchants would be able to accept card payments anywhere in South Africa by “dipping” the card into the Pebble, entering the PIN, and then following the prompts on the mobile app to conclude the transaction.

One of the key differentiating features of the technology, Absa said, will be its ability to enable safe and secure payment acceptance as a PIN-entry device for both chip and magnetic swipe strip cards.

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