The Roampay Swiper lets merchants transact with consumers on their mobile devices. The service is also available on the iPhone and iPod touch.

“Our strategy is to always keep up with the most current and the oldest mobile platforms in the market,” said Will Wang Graylin, CEO of Roam Data, Boston.

“This is the same as our swiper for all iPhones,” he said.

Roam is a full-service mobile commerce provider. It has a fully PCI-certified payment gateway to securely deliver commerce applications with authentication of each device and each session

Swipe to pay
In addition to Apple’s devices, the Roampay Swiper is also available on many smartphones.

The company’s service turns merchant handsets into point of sale terminals for vendors and contractors.

Roampay claims that its platform lets companies reach up to 15 times more mobile users and update the merchant’s applications more than 20 times faster than a static application.

The Roampay Swiper plugs into a device’s 3.5mm headphone jack.

According to the company, the technology uses an end-to-end encryption so a  customer’s information is never exposed.

In addition to the swiper, the company also has a Bluetooth Print-swiper that offers consumers receipts for their transactions.

The device connects to a handset using Bluetooth.

Roam’s other mobile commerce services include end-user application provisioning, rights management and alerts.

Merchant apps
The company introduced the swiper in June.

A merchant can plug the swiper into the audio jack of a handset and then run the Roampay application on the phone.

The merchant can then enter the amount, push the swipe button and swipe the card (see story).

“We’re getting the word out through our blog and public relations,” Mr. Graylin said. “Because the demand is huge and the iPhone 4 is seen by many as THE launchpad for real mobile commerce.