Palm Pre gets mobile finance app right out of the gate

Intuit announced today that it is releasing an application for Pre phones to turn them into credit card terminals. The GoPayment application would allow users to process credit card payments through the device from anywhere they can get a conneciton.

The application is available free from the Pre App Catalog right now. But in order to use it you have to have an Intuit GoPayment merchant account -  which costs $59.95 to set up, followed by a $19.95 monthly payment.

Source: http://facebook.ulitzer.com/node/996924

From the release:

“Palm Pre lets entrepreneurs easily juggle the many demands of their business with those of their personal life,” said Pam Deziel, vice president, Developer Marketing, Palm, Inc. “Palm products have always been about simplifying lives, and GoPayment does that too by letting business owners process payments on the spot so they get paid faster.”

What we think?

This is a pretty cool little add-on for merchants who already pay for their GoPayment account - free VAS stuff like this is the kind of gesture that breeds loyalty.

Intuit first announced this service for other platforms back in May, and I think the timing of the Pre release is impeccable. After the initial excitement has worn down after the release on Saturday, people are casting about to see what else is new with their new toy. And here’s Intuit. Good show!

Interestingly, the main platforms that Intuit has aimed at before have been Motorola and Blackberry - the traditional friends of enterprise and businessmen. One wonders if Intuit believe the Palm will be another businessmans phone?