Today Intuit is making its two-year-old premium GoPayment service free - a service which comes with a magnetic stripe reader attachment that hooks onto the iPhone, similar to the one Square offers.

Intuit's GoPayment's offering is a combination of a mobile application and, optionally, a magnetic stripe reader that attaches to the phone. Intuit no longer charges the $13/month fee or charges for the reader attachment (previously $219) - it's all free now*. But to make that possible, GoPayment takes a higher cut of the transactions with its new discount rate fee of 2.7% (before it was 1.7%). For key-entered and non-qualified transactions, the rate is 3.7%. In addition, $0.15 is charged per transaction. These fees are competitive with Square.

The above prices are what's available to low-volume customers - the same customers who may have been considering Square's reader instead. For high-volumne customers, there are different rates - a $12.95/month service fee; 1.7% for card swiped; 2.7% for key entered and 3.7% for non-qualified transactions, like corporate cards; and a $0.30 per transaction fee.

GoPayment also offers no long-term contracts, cancellation, gateway or set-up fees, it says. One account can enable up to 50 users and works on iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, plus some Palm and Nokia devices.

Merchants can accept a number of credit cards with the service, but additional fees apply when accepting cards other than Visa, MasterCard and Discover (like American Express or Diner's Club cards).

There is more than one type of hardware attachment available for use with GoPayment. Intuit partnered with Mophie for its iPhone reader, for example, the makers of iPhone battery-charging solutions like the Juice Pack. There are also Bluetooth-enabled readers and reader/printer combos available.

*One important note: GoPayment is only offering a free account and free reader to those who sign up by mid-February, after which prices may revert back, although Intuit isn't confiriming.

Square

Intuit's top-competitor (that is, if you go by what tech journalists like to write about) is Square, the startup launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Like GoPayment, Square includes both a mobile app and a credit card reading device - a small, square-shaped device whose shape gives the company its name.

Like GoPayment's (temporary) offer, the reader is free and there are no monthly service fees. The swiped transaction fee is 2.75%, a bit higher than Intuit's 2.7% but its per transaction fees are the same ($0.15/each). For keyed in transactions, the rate is 3.5% + $0.15.

Square says there are no gateway, monthly, early termination or hidden fees and you can accept an unlimited number of payments without restrictions on either transaction size or number of transactions. Square deposits your first $1,001 of sales per week into your bank account immediately. Any remaining amount is transferred after 30 days.

As a Square user, you can accept any U.S.-issued credit, debit, pre-paid, or gift card with a Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover logo.

Unlike GoPayments, Square is currently available for iPhone and Android only (select devices only) - not BlackBerry.

It should be noted, too, that Square is currently in a patent battle over the origins of its reader and the related patents. The company had previously run into a number of other issues, including production delays to compatibility issues with the iPhone 4.

Verifone PAYware Mobile

Like the above, Verifone's PAYware Mobile solution is a combination mobile app and optional reader hardware.

The service works on any iPhone (3G/3GS/4) device, iPad or iPod Touch, but only manual entry is supported on the iPhone 4, iPad and iPod. The company says it has plans to expand to BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Android in the future.

The PAYware card encryption sleeve works on iPhone 3G/3GS only. This is PAYware's key selling point, as it touts the end-to-end encryption it offers, which meets the same security standards used by ATMs and Point-of-Sale terminals. Other vendors, it says, support SSL only, a software-based encryption method.

PAYWare also says the fees and fee structures will vary and doesn't list them on its site. Its rates will be based on risk criteria categorized into  "Qualified", "Mid-Qualified" and "Non-Qualified" tiers, as is standard. Rates will also vary depending on the type of business and whether or not a transaction is swiped or keyed in, also typical. In addition, gateway fees for access to the PAYware Connect gateway are charged, too.

You can get an idea of PAYware's fees, by checking out reseller's pricing plans, like this one, which lists setup fees, monthly fees, per transactions fees, etc.  For a more personalized quote, PAYware says t can go here for more info.

Typically though, a setup fee of $49 and monthly fees of $20 to $30 apply, as do per transaction fees, which are either taken as a straight amount or a percentage. The reader may be offered for free, depending on the contract length. It's usually sold for $139. The mobile application used along with the hardware is free.

PAYware accepts Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover credit and debit cards.

ROAMpay

ROAMpay, another mobile credit card device and app combo, is available for a number of phones, including the iPhone 3G/3GS/4, iPad, several Android devices, BlackBerry phones, select Nokia phones and many others. The Swiper hardware is available for several Android and Apple devices and BlackBerry.

Merchants can accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover credit and debit cards, and others.

To use ROAMpay, customers must contact their merchant account provider to see if they carry ROAMpay. If so, they will help you get signed up, which includes locating the appropriate hardware and downloading the $2.99 app from iTunes, if applicable. ROAMpay says this fee applies for any other phone that supports mobile apps, including Google Android devices and phones that offer Verizon Wireless's Get It Now service. With ROAMpay, your normal payment processing fees apply. You can also use ROAMpay on your PC or Mac.

If you don't have a merchant account, ROAMpay can connect you with its Payment Partners.

ROAMpay also promotes its security features - all payment info is double-encrypted as entered on the device and is never fully decrypted until it enters the payment gateway for processing by one of ROAM's payment platform partners. No sensitive data such as card numbers, magnetic stripe information or security codes are stored on the mobile device.

As 2011 approaches, ReadWriteWeb takes a look back at 10 of the last year's most useful or promising Web tools for small and medium-sized businesses.

Billed as the Mint.com for small businesses, InDinero launched in early July and is a real-time financial dashboard for companies. The Y Combinator-backed startup is led by 20-year-old Jessica Mah, who got the idea for InDinero while she was selling items on eBay in middle school.

"I had no idea how much money I was actually making," Mah told us in July. Mah, who is obviously some kind of super-genius, graduated from UC Berkley's computer science program this year at the age of 19 and promptly began putting the finishing touches on the Web app, which closely resembles Mint.com.

InDinero is free for up to 50 transactions per month, $29.95 for up to 500, and $99.95 for an unlimited number of monthly transactions.

Rapportive

Depending on how readily available such details are, Rapportive will pull an avatar image, name, job title, recent tweets and links to any active social networking profiles the person may have. You can even connect with somebody on LinkedIn via Rapportive, without leaving Gmail.

Next page: No longer is there a barrier for even the smallest of businesses to begin accepting credit cards where ever they may be...

Square

Square may not be the only solution for taking credit card payments via mobile devices, but it certainly garnered the most buzz this year and has helped put mobile payments within reach of small businesses everywhere.

No longer is there a barrier for even the smallest of businesses to begin accepting credit cards where ever they may be: at a trade show, convention hall or in a store or cafe.

Google Apps

For SMBs and enterprise customers of Google Apps, an enormous number of new tools were made available this year, including Analytics, Places, Blogger, Picasa, Custom Search, Website Optimizer and Google Checkout, among many others.

Next page: It's hard to deny the emerging importance of real-time data to businesses of all sizes...

Real-time Analytics

On our ReadWriteBiz channel, we discussed how real-time analytics can benefit small businesses and covered one company that increased traffic by 300% using real-time data.

Flowtown

Launched in late 2009, social email marketing tool Flowtown really started to take off this year, raising $750,000 in funding and amassing over 15,000 customers.

Flowtown lets you import a list of email contacts and find out more information about each person via any social networking profiles they may have. Flowtown shows who's on Facebook, Twitter (including their Klout score) and LinkedIn and even includes details from Flickr or Amazon wish lists.

For businesses, this offers a whole new level of social insight into what was once just a list of email addresses collecting dust in a CSV file or database somewhere.

Next page: Businesses have an enormous amount of online data to keep track of...

iPad

Apple's breakthrough tablet computer was a huge hit among consumers this year, especially for things like reading and gaming. And while that was largely how the device was marketed, we also started to see it used for business purposes, especially in the financial services and technology industries.

Currently, there are over 1,750 iPad apps in the "Business" section of the App Store, and that doesn't even include the 1,640 apps found under "Productivity." Apple's Keynote, Pages and Numbers apps are all in the top 10 top-grossing apps in the store, and others like Remote Desktop Lite, Documents To Go, Box.net and PrintCentral have proven quite popular.

Another business function fulfilled by the iPad this year has been attending online meetings. GoToMeeting, WebEx and Fuze Meeting all have solid applications that make attending conference calls and meetings easy and, oddly, sort of enjoyable.

Geckoboard

Businesses have an enormous amount of online data to keep track of. Between Web analytics, social media metrics, email subscribers, CRM, customer support stats and project management, companies have at least half a dozen dashboards to log into and pull data from.

Geckoboard is an all-in-one dashboard for displaying all this data and more in one location, offering a comprehensive snapshot of one's business at a glance. It's designed in such a way that it can easily be displayed on a computer monitor, mobile device or large screen TV around the office. The Web app has some growing to do, particularly in terms of the breadth of data sources it supports, but considering it was just launched late this year, it's quite promising.

Next page: Numbers nine and 10

Mindflash

Mindflash is an online training system lets trainers build courses using PDFs, PowerPoint, Word docs and videos, and then invite trainees, who are later quizzed on their progress. It comes equipped with trainee progress reports, which show in real-time how each person is doing and who may need additional training.

The appeal for small businesses is two-fold: It automates many training-relating tasks, freeing up time and energy for other projects, and comes with a very affordable price tag. Mindflash is free to use for organizations with 10 or fewer trainees, and then ranges from $79 to $399 per month, depending on the number of trainees.

Spreadable

Spreadable encourages sharing of content by letting site owners create an embdeddable, all-in-one sharing widget from which visitors can email a link to friends or post it to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a host of other popular social networking sites. Of course, at the end of the day, any content has to be genuinely interesting or useful to people in order to really take off, but Spreadable is one tool that can help enable its proliferation.

Spreadable comes to us from the Grasshopper Group, the team that developed the Grasshopper virtual phone system and Chargify platform for recurring billing. It's currently in beta and available for free.

What did we leave off this list that you would have included? Let us know in the comments.

Real-Time View of App Creation

With the next generation of the product, Sweb Apps 2.0, some of the original concerns about the - well, let's say it - rather boring user interface of the Sweb-built apps have begun to be addressed. Whereas before you could only customize the background color and upload your own buttons, today you can customize the background to be an image instead. And if you don't have one of your own, Sweb Apps provides an online library of images to choose from. That's a step in the right direction, even if some of the backgrounds are reminiscent of early GeoCities Web pages or Windows 98 wallpapers... after all, you have to crawl before you can run.

As you build your app's landing page, you're provided with a real-time view of your app in progress, which makes it much easier to tell whether your images, buttons and colors look good together or not. That's a handy feature for SMB owners, who may be creating their app on their own without the aid of a professional designer. The app builder also uses drag-and-drop functionality to make the process even more painless for the inexperienced end user.

Mobile Storefronts

However, one of the most interesting developments in the 2.0 version of Sweb Apps' online service is the new "store" functionality. Now, as easy as it is to build an app, you can essentially build a mobile storefront for your business. This feature, still in beta, allows you to categorize, sub-categorize, itemize and write descriptions for your products. You can manage and maintain your inventory through Sweb's CMS, and your mobile customers can "check out" via the included PayPal integration.

Sweb Apps tells us that they envision this sort of feature being used by restaurants, boutiques and small retailers. That's easy to imagine. For example: wish you had picked up a t-shirt from that seafood place where you dined on vacation? In theory, you could now, even if you were halfway home, thanks to these new mobile storefronts. In a way, the mobile stores are even better than having the same functionality via an online store on the "real" Web, mainly because not everyone brings their laptop around with them 24/7. But their iPhones? People don't leave home without them.

And More...

Other features being introduced today include podcasts, audio streams and YouTube integration, all of which streams audio or video within the app itself, as opposed to launching an external program such as the iPhone's own built-in YouTube app. Also new is the ability for users to manage multiple applications from one account.

Sweb Apps says they've seen good results since their August 2009 launch, with a 400% increase in sales, but won't share actual numbers. That doesn't really tell us much about the service's adoption by the SMB market. Since the company isn't touting any high-profile clients or case studies in their PR though, we have to imagine that they're flying a bit under the radar on the business front at this point. Still, it's very early in the game, and services like this can take a while to catch on and gain popularity.

The pricing for Sweb Apps remains the same despite the new features. The company offers four-, six- and eight-button packages, which all include a one-time set-up fee of $50 per button. Then there is a $25 monthly hosting fee applied to every application going forward.

Validas is ideal for the SMB (Small Medium Business) market. That includes all the bootstrapping Gritty Entrepreneurs as well as the VC funded start-ups that just got the "cut costs" memo from their pals at the VC fund. But it is also the 27 million Small Medium Businesses that employ 50% of Americans.

Validas can be used by a consumer. But an individual can probably spend a few minutes and figure it out themselves.

Nor is Validas ideal for Fortune 500. They can get the data from the carriers in a form that they can analyze any way they want, they can employ people to haggle with the carriers and have the clout to get results.

What if you are the CEO with 20 employees? You have other priorities. You can tell your Admin/Finance person to do it, but maybe his priority should be chasing receivables? You can tell all 20 of your people to figure out how to reduce all their cell phone bills? Well, if you are the kind of CEO that sprays employees with constant priorities that all get ignored, you could employ consultants to do it, but their fees might outweigh the savings.

Automating A Small Boring Job

Validas does what you would do if you took the trouble or if you employed somebody to do it. They just automate it, so they can do it fast and efficiently and thus make money in the process.

This is boring and it is small. So it should be really easy. It should fit into that quadrant that is Minor Impact/Easy To Do.

That is easy to say, but hard to pull off. Validas has the experience to deliver this. The founders, Tom Pepe and Todd Dunphy, left their safe jobs at Verizon Wireless to start Validas. They know all the tricks that carriers use to get those extra fees.

How It Works

To use Validas, you will need to be set up for online billing. Online billing is free from your carrier and you do not need to cancel your paper bill to use Validas. You can use Validas for bills from: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular.

Then you upload to Validas and view your potential savings. You can download this information into Excel or print out the reports.

Validas claims that the Current Average Yearly Savings Per Customer = $505. Presumably that is not per user and is for a small business of some type.

Validas pricing is simple, with various plans. The one they promote as best value costs $24 for 24 reports, audited every month. So that would work for a 24 person company. You can test it out with a $5 One Time Audit.

Validas fits the trend we are seeing of a return to simple "every day low prices" rather than fancy Freemium models supported by advertising. If it has value, charge for it.

The End Of Information Asymmetry

Validas looks like it is part of a big trend towards transparency, the end of "information asymmetry" that we noted in our Ten Trends To Bet On For Your Most Audacious Start-Up. We have seen start-ups doing this well in the car market. We suspect we will see more in financial services. In all cases, the start-up takes the side of the small buyer to get better deals from a large seller. Validas is a welcome entrant in the cell phone market.