Competition in the mobile payment space is about to shift into overdrive. GigaOm is reporting that PayPal is set to announce its own solution on Thursday, which will include a dongle that can process credit card swipes on a mobile device.
Companies like Square, Intuit, and Verifone already offer this kind of smartphone attachment.
PayPal's director of communications declined to elaborate on PayPal's plans, but offered the following statement to PCMag.
"While we cannot comment on rumors and speculation, what we can tell you is that at the PayPal event on Thursday we will unveil what we believe will be the future of commerce for small businesses," he said.
Recently, PayPal has made a push to secure a foothold in brick-and-mortar stores, and a mobile payment dongle would be in line with those moves. For example, PayPal this month began rolling out in-store point-of-sale payment systems in Home Depots throughout the country, and is available in almost all of the retailer's 2,000 U.S. locations.
As GigaOm noted, however, the Home Depot program works with the company's existing hardware. Thursday's announcement will introduce new PayPal hardware for the first time.
PayPal processed nearly $4 billion worth of mobile payments in 2011, up from $750 million in 2010 and $141 million in 2009, the company said in January.
Square's mobile payment attachment, meanwhile, has brought the startup its fair share of success – it's now processing a whopping $4 billion each year. Earlier this month, Square released a new iPad app called Cash Register that does most things a conventional register can do. The company also spearheaded an effort to deploy Square-equipped iPads in several NYC taxicabs.