I originally reviewed the Graze Product in 2009, back when there was very little information on the internet about this service that delivers delicious nibbly-bits to your mailbox once a week I confess that I canceled my subscription in Q1 2010, however this was in a bid to save a little money, loose some weight and eat less over all. I was not displeased with the service, but at the time it did not fit my lifestyle. Since the review went live back in 2009, it gathering comments and feedback from readers and existing customers of Graze. A lot of the feedback I have received from existing customers was of a frustration of being unable to cancel their subscription to Graze. I’ve replied to each and every comments and offered advice where I’ve been able to, even going to far as to contact Graze directly to make them aware of the issues users were facing.

A week ago I received an email invitation to try one of their new products, a Breakfast box. Part of accepting the invitation involved restarting my weekly (or bi-weekly) Graze Box delivery, which would give me a Breakfast box at half price. I figured this would give me a perfect excuse to re-visit my original review of the Graze service and to write a far more comprehensive review of their offerings.

How does Graze work?

Put simply, Graze is snack food delivered right to your home or place of work. You receive a box through the post with four punnets (little plastic containers) of snack food. The food can range from mini flapjacks to seeds, to little oatbakes with a dip, to rice crackers. All for £3.95 per box.

Who is Graze for?

To me, the target audience for Graze is the average office worker who is looking for a little something to look forward to once a week, that also gives them a way of breaking up a their working day with tasty treats. I personally use the Graze box to break up my least enjoyable day of the week (that boring Wednesday that’s slap bang in the middle of the week) and to give me a healthy snack once every so often that fits in well with my diet (meaning to me it needs to be a quantifiable amount so I can watch my calorie intake).

Getting started with Graze

You get started by visiting Graze.com. For new users you need to register for a new account.

New Users

• Go to Graze.com and click ‘Get Started Now’. You will see a promotional gift code entry box at the top right of your screen. Enter VGWR1QHD to get a free Graze Box, or click here to go straight to Graze.com and get your free Graze Box free.
• First you need to decide whether you want a ‘Nibble Box‘ (maximum variety, over 100 foods to choose from) or a ‘Nutrition Box‘ (selection of foods chosen by the Graze nutrition team).
• Next you choose how often you want your boxes. Options at this point are ‘Once a Fortnight’ ‘Once a Week’ or ‘Twice a Week’. Once you have signed up and begun your plan more frequency options become available (such as every fourth monday of the month).
• Now you enter your name, email address and choose a password (dont loose your logon credentials, otherwise altering / cancelling your subscription will be fairly difficult). Finally is a checkbox asking if you have a nut allergy. Unfortunately if you check this box you cannot continue as their food is packed in an environment where nuts are present.
• Next enter your delivery and billing information as requested. Additional addresses and billing methods can be added later on, as well as options to deliver different boxes to different addresses.
• Finally Graze will ask you about what types of food you like or dislike. Complete this to your taste, but make sure to do this before completing your signup, otherwise you might receive something that you dont like.

The Graze Website

The Graze Website has a remarkable amount of options for such a simple product, however it is a relatively easy affair to use. The thing Graze has going for it is choice. There are over 100 foods available to you, and you can tell Graze which ones you like or dislike. You also have a surprisingly powerful control over your delivery frequency, and you can find out a surprising amount of information about all of their products and the company.

Navigation through the site is handled through the main menu at the top of the screen. You’ll spend 90% of your time in only three of the tabs at the top, so we’ll look mostly at those. ‘Your Snacks’, ‘Deliveries’, and your Account menu.

What’s on the Menu?

Graze offer an extensive range of foods for your Graze Boxes. All of these foods can be viewed through the ‘Your Snacks’ tab at the top. When you first click into this tab you will be shown a list of categories on the left, some foods that you had sent to you recently in the centre, and a scrolling banner at the top showing you some new foods that you could try. From here you can browse into each category which will display a whole range of foods, or you can use the search bar in the top right to quickly find foods or ingredients you love.

The selection of food from Graze is vast, with everything from Healthy Chocolate Brownies, to savoury snacks, seeds, chocolate, nuts, fruit, and even afternoon tea and cake! You certainly wont be getting the same items week-in week-out. If this still isn’t enough, Graze do add and remove items from their menu’s every so often. In fact most of the foods I received 3 years ago are no longer available, however I certainly love their new selection!

Food preferences

What if I dont like certain foods, or I try something that I didnt enjoy? Not a problem. Graze has a simple to use rating system that will allow you to control the content of your boxes.

Graze’s food preference system works on four levels. Bin, Try, Like and Love. You rate foods to your tastes and Graze will accomodate you in your deliveries. If you really want an item, click ‘Send Soon’ and Graze will do their best to get it to you in one of your next deliveries. If you didn’t have time to set all of your love/like/try/bin preferences during signup, you can access this again from your control panel in your account under ‘Your Snacks’. You can also adjust your ratings based on deliveries you receive. If you receive something that was on your ‘try’ list, and you end up loving it (or even hate it) you can rate the product accordingly. This can be done from their ‘Your Snacks’ screen or from your ‘Deliveries’ screen by clicking on the relevant box that was delivered.

When I used Graze the first time I went through and binned some of the foods with certain items in it. The Graze site picked up that I was eliminating all the foods with this one item in it, and asked me if I wanted to automatically remove all foods with this one item in it. This shows that the Graze system does have some form of algorithm to make your menu selection that little bit easier.

Also on the food menu are three filters that allow you to list items based on your religion / dietary requirement. These include Dairy/Milk, Non-Vegan, and Non-coeliac. Each of these areas has a quick button to bin all foods in that group so you dont have to search through every group to remove individual items.

Getting your Graze Box

Deliveries is your second most important tab. From here you can control the frequency and destination of your Graze boxes. The centre screen shows your previous deliveries (as well as any that are currently being prepared), with the right displaying three tabs ‘Holidays’, ‘One-Off boxes’ and ‘Your Weekly Boxes’. From this screen you can view / rate previous boxes, manage your upcoming deliveries and their frequency, tell Graze when you’re on Holiday and wont be wanting your boxes, order single boxes, or manage your reoccurring deliveries.

Your Last Boxes

From here you can view all your previous boxes, as well as any boxes that are currently being prepared by Graze. You can view the contents of each box by clicking ‘What did I get?’,  you can share the contents of this box on Facebook and Twitter, or you can send feedback to Graze about the box and its contents.

Your Holidays

From here you can schedule breaks in your Graze Deliveries by telling Graze the dates when you’ll be away From and Until. This way no food will be sat in your mailbox while you’re sunning yourself on a beach. This is also useful for scheduling occasional breaks from your Graze Boxes.

Your One-Off Boxes

From here you can tell Graze to send you a single box without creating a reoccurring delivery.This is useful should you need that little extra on a certain day, or just want to sample a different type of box.

Your Weekly Boxes

This is where you control your deliveries and their frequency. When you create a new reoccurring delivery it is automatically set to ‘Weekly’ for frequency. You can change this to ‘Every two weeks’ once you’ve initially set it up. Graze supports deliveries to multiple addresses (indeed I have my Breakfast box delivered to home and my Nibble Box delivered to work).

If at any point you wish to cancel your Graze Deliveries, you simply need to remove all your Weekly Boxes from here and your deliveries will stop.

Managing your Account

Like any web-based order system, there is a tab to manage your account. This menu allows you to change all of your personal details, add payment methods (Multiple are supported), delivery addresses (multiple addresses are supported), specify your communication preferences and change your email address and password. You can also log out of your account from here.

While most of this is run of the mill, the ‘Preferences’ menu is worth covering. From here you can tell Graze to send you ‘More products that I’ve said I Like or Love’, ‘A good balance between all my ratings’, or ‘More products that I’ve said to Try’.

Also on this screen are your communication preferences, which allow you to get four communications from Graze. These include ‘Your box its on its way’ email, ‘Rate your box’ email, ‘One off Delivery Upate’ emails and ‘Special Announcement’ emails. Since being subscribed to Graze I have never received many emails from them. I find the Delivery Status emails very useful, and the Rate your Box emails fairly good to remind me to set my food preferences for what I’ve just received.

A question that I am frequently asked is ‘Can I delete my account?’ Currently, there is no method of completely deleting your Graze account once it has been created, however you can cease all deliveries in your ‘Deliveries’ option (see above).

About the products and the company

The Box

The graze box is a simple thing. It arrives through the Royal Mail post as a brown box with two plastic security wrappers (not pictured) securing it closed horizontally and vertically.

Upon opening the box you are greeted by a Graze booklet, four punnets of Graze food, a 100% recycled napkin and a bamboo skewer (this helps with messier foods such as Olives).

Each individual punnet is self contained in a little plastic container with a easy-peel lid with the name of what is in it, a pleasing graphic depicting something related to the contents of the punnet, and a barcode that is scannable through the MyFitnessPal app so you can add it to your food diary.

The Graze booklet contains the use-by and nutritional information for what is in your Graze box punnets (this includes Energy, Carbs, Protein, Fats, Fibre, Sodium and whether your punnet contains a portion of fruit), and a little poster telling you some information from Graze. On the front of the box is your name as well as the date which the box was intended for delivery on. On the back of the card (under the ‘How to feed your friends’ section) another voucher code for me to issue as I please via social networks or other methods. Also on the back was information about the Graze packaging and how to recycle it.

Our packaging and how to recycle it:

The box and this booklet are made from sustainable sources and they’re both biodegradable and recyclable. Our punnets are made from 80% recycled content and can be recycled along with other plastics.

I feel this is a nice touch and it certainly made me reconsider just binning the empty punnets once I had finished grazing. It is worth noting that some companies do not offer the best recycling schemes ever, so it is probably worth transporting the packaging and punnets home so that you can recycle them through your household recycling. Some punnets (such as those containing olives and oil) might require a brief rinse out before going in the recycling.

Types of boxes

Nibble Box

This is Graze’s most popular box, and probably the one that most people will go for. It gives you access the full range of foods from their menu.

Nutrition Box

If you go for a Nutrition Box, then you can select what sort of Nutritional plan you would like. The three plans currently on offer are:

eatwellBox - A selection of all our healthy recipes with the odd treat now and again.

boostBox - Our strictest, most healthy box with our most nutrient dense foods to give you a natural boost.

lightbox - All our lowest calorie nibbles. Everything’s between 50 and 150 calories and nothing tastes like diet food. Great if you’re watching your weight.

These are perfect for people who are on diets or trying to focus on eating specific foods. Selecting any of these boxes will immediately limit your menu options for that box.

Breakfast Box

This is a new product from Graze which allows you to get your day off to the right start with a good healthy breakfast. The box is a selection of four Porridges in punnets similar to the regular Graze Nibblebox. They contain a helping of porridge and on the side a little helping of Honey to add to your porridge.

Graze currently have 8 different porridges to choose from on their site, with an option of either ‘Yes Please’ or ‘No Thanks’ instead of the regular Bin, Try, Like, Love. system. As the Breakfast box becomes more established we expect to see a larger choice of porridges become available.

Nutritional and Allergy Information

Graze is very transparent with their Nutritional information, offering a very clear and informative Calorie count through their website.

For those with Nut allergies, a quick trip to the FAQ reveals some disappointing information.

Are your products nut free?

Unfortunately not, we can’t guarantee that our products are free from traces of nuts and sesame ingredients since everything is prepared in the graze kitchen. So if you suffer from a nut allergy, you will not be able to graze.

When I originally signed up to Graze four years ago,  I told one of my friends who Nut Allergies. We immediately looked on their website to see if it would be safe from him to ‘graze’, and was met with exactly the same information that we find today. I was hoping that in the four years Graze would have developed a process to allow those with nut allergies to partake in their product. I suppose that this is no different than most restaurants who put this at the bottom of their menus as a ‘catch-all’ clause to protect them from anyone with a nut allergy from keeling over in their place of business, though I would still have liked to see a method of deselecting all nut / sesame products in their food range selector.

My Boxes, delivered

Below is a running review of the boxes I’ve received. I’ve tried to include pictures where I can. Please be aware that this section is based on my personal tastes. For this part of the review I have my Nibble Boxes set to be delivered every two weeks, with Breakfast boxes being delivered once a month.

Nibble Box – Week 1

Link to my Graze Nibble Box for Wednesday 8th May 2013

My box arrived (unfortuantely) a day later, and in the afternoon. This was partially due to a recent strike by Royal Mail and party due to a slightly delayed internal mail delivery inside of our Campus. The box arrived in good condition and showed no signs of wear or tear from being delayed or passed around the various postal systems.

The Graze Card that I received was a ‘Welcome Back’ card with a picture of a Graze box sitting on a deckchair wearing sunglasses. Attached to the card were four Graze Box vouchers for me to give to friends for them to get a free graze box.

Total Energy (kcal) for box = 547kcal

 Bonnie wee Oatbakes

Energy (kcal) per punnet (36g) = 114kcal

Having only had my first oatbake two weeks ago at Stonehenge, I was looking forward to trying some more. Needless to say when I visited the Graze website before restarting my deliveries I put these on my ‘Send Soon’ list. These Bonnie wee Oatbakes did not disappoint. The little cheese and chive oatbakes are accompanied by Red Onion Marmalade. This was the first time I’d had a cheese and chive oatbake. By themselves the oatbakes would have been a bit dry for my liking, but the  and with a nice helping of the marmalade on top they were incredibly tasty and the perfect savoury snack to enjoy at my desk over some light web work. One for the ‘Love’ list.

Mississippi BBQ Pistachios

Energy (kcal) per punnet (32g) = 189kcal

I’ve always been a fan of pistachios, and having never had them with a flavouring on them before I was intrigued to see what they tasted like. While I did enjoy the Pistachios, I found these the least enjoyable item in this weeks box. The BBQ flavouring was lovely though they came across as far too salty for my personal taste (I prefer pistachios with very little / no salt). The Pistachios were still in their shell (shelling them is half of the fun!), and there was a perfect amount for a little day-time snack. This one will unfortunately be going in the ‘Bin’ list as it does not fit my personal taste at this moment.

Pomodoro Rustichella

Energy (kcal) per punnet (23g) = 115kcal

Having got no idea what a Pomodoro Rustichella was, I was intrigued by this little punnet. Inside were three different items. Cheese croutons, tomato baguettes and tomato and herb almonds. The croutons and baguettes were still fresh and crispy, despite the delay in the delivery. The croutons were full of flavour and easily comparable to some of the best from supermarket shelves. The little baguettes had a far more subtle flavour but were still lovely, crispy and fresh. For me though, the start of this punnet was the Tomato and Herb Almonds. These were packed with flavours and tasted superb. Unlike the Pistachios in the previous punnet, these were not at all salty and tasted lovely. This is definitely one on my ‘Love’ list.

Mixed olives with rosemary and lemon

Energy (kcal) per punnet (42g) = 129kcal

Seeing how I forgot to take a photo of these (sorry!) you can probably guess that I enjoyed them! Unlike most olives from the store, these were not swimming in oil. The lemon taste was very subtle and was a perfect complement to the rosemary. The olives themselves were lovely and moist, free of stones and tasted lovely. Definitely another for my ‘Love’ list.

Breakfast Box – Week 2

Link to my Graze Box for Monday 13th May 2013

The Graze Card in this box contained some the usual nutritional information, some promotional codes for friends, instructions on how to cook my porridge, and we ‘Welcome to the Club’ section explaining that I was one of the first people to try the new Breakfast Boxes. The nutritional information had an additional section that showed the nutritional information for Semi Skimmed milk, so that you can add this to your nutritional information for the day should you wish.

Having never had porridge before I did not know what to expect. Least of all the lasting affects. I went to work far more full of energy than usual, and ended up feeling comfortably full even up till lunch time.

Total Energy (kcal) for box = 626kcal (plus milk)

Walnut and Pecan porridge

Energy (kcal) per punnet (39g) = 162kcal (plus milk)

This was the first porridge I tried, and subsequently my first ever experience with porridge. It proved to be very tasty! While it did not look as appetising as I would have hoped after it was mixed with milk and microwaved (does porridge ever look nice?), the taste  was lovely! it had a perfect balance of nuts and oats, and the little side-helping of honey really added a great flavour to the mix. This is definitely staying on the ‘Yes Please’ list!

Cherry and Almond porridge

Energy (kcal) per punnet (48g) = 174kcal (plus milk)

Apple and Cinnamon porridge

Energy (kcal) per punnet (43g) = 143kcal (plus milk)

This was my second experience with the Graze porridge, and I have to say another very pleasant one. This punnet of goodness contained a decent amount of apple pieces, complemented by a very reasonable helping of raisons. The amount of cinnamon in this was just right for me, and it certainly didn’t make it too sweet. Adding the honey on top was the perfect combination. No photo for this one due to a 5am start, though I will definitely be getting this one again! One for the ‘Yes Please’ list!

Blackcurrent and Cranberry porridge

Energy (kcal) per punnet (42g) = 147kcal (plus milk)

This punnet was one that I only got to sample, having had it quickly taken off me by my girlfriend as soon as she saw it. I did however get to sample it, and it proved to have a lovely fruity balance with the oats. While she preferred it without honey I still preferred it with. Maybe Graze should offer versions without honey, or maybe an alternative to honey? I would still choose to have this one again!

Nibble Box – Week 3

Week three, Graze box three. This box arrived dead on time to my office, in pristine condition. In the box was the usual Bamboo skewer and a Graze Card saying “Flapjacks. Where do ours come from” on a little wooden sign over some ingredients associated with the Graze Flapjacks. Indeed in the box was a flapjack!

Total Energy (kcal) for box = 576.7kcal

Salsa Fresca

Energy (kcal) per punnet (25g) = 50.7kcal

This is another new product for Graze, and one that I was eager to try. I’ve been going through a phase of loving Salsa. As you can see the punnet is divided into two, with a small section of Salsa and the rest for the crackers. Lets start with the crackers. A light cheesy rice cracker. By themselves they would have been a touch dry, but still tasted lovely. They were perfectly crispy and not a single broken one in the punnet! Add these to the smooth cool salsa (that tasted very fresh and nothing like the stuff you get in jars from the supermarket) and you have a lovely little treat. I enjoyed these with my lunch and would certainly love to again!

Green olives with basil and garlic

Energy (kcal) per punnet (44g) = 130kcal

This is one of those simple items done well. Lovely green olives, fresh, in olive oil with basil and garlic. Like the last olives I received, these were not swimming in oil. The amount of garlic was just right, and by no means overpowering. Some people who have Graze at work might worry about suffering ‘garlic breath’ after eating these olives, though I did not feel there was enough in them to cause that rather unfortunately side-effect. I ate these on day two with my lunch (I even added one or two to my home-made wrap).

Apple and Cinnamon flapjack

Energy (kcal) per punnet (54g) = 238kcal

I ended up eating this as part of my dinner on Wednesday Night, as I was running late. Flapjacks are a new product for Graze, and one that I can say they have done very well with. This little flapjack came pre-cut into three (though at first glance you might not realize this). Sampling this was a pleasure. It was not too moist and not too dry (just right!). The taste of Apple was very subtle, with the sweetness of the cinnamon coming though with every bite. This is probably one of my favourite items from Graze yet, even if it does have the highest calorie count.

Bakewell tart

Energy (kcal) per punnet (38g) = 158kcal

The was my mid-morning snack a day after receiving the box. This punnet came packed with Cherry Raisins, Almonds and Cranberries. I should start by saying that I have a rather love/hate relationship with Almonds as I typically find them dry, however the almonds in the punnet had a lovely subtle taste of the fruit that was in with them. The cherry raisins were definitely something that I had never had before, but tasted great, and the cranberries (while by themselves I wouldn’t have gone for them) when combined with the almonds and raisins complemented the whole affair. By themselves, I doubt I would have gone for any of the three ingredients, but as a medley they work brilliantly!

Nibble Box – Week 5

Information coming soon – Please check back for more updates

Disclaimer

This review is not sponsored or commissioned by Nature Delivered Ltd (Graze) or any of their affiliated companies.

Graze.com, Three years on – A two month review Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

Following on from the success of my review of the iZettle Chip & PIN mobiel payment solution, I have decided to go a step further and look at another Chip & PIN solution that I was not aware of until recently.

Intuit Pay from Intuit Limited is a new Chip & PIN Mobile Payment solution that consists of a mobile Chip & PIN terminal that communicates with its partner Application on your smartphone by the way of Bluetooth.

Who is it for?

Unlike iZettle which aims at Business and Consumers alike, Intuit Pay is aimed solely at Business owners. This has allowed them to have more functionality and customisation within their service offering.

Business may question the high cost per Transaction (2.75%) as card terminals from other banking providers have a lower cost of less than 2%. The disadvantage with these larger business-oriented banking terminals is that they have a monthly rental fee for the terminal, and often come with a minimum contract term of 1 year and a minimum turnover per month. Intuit Pay has no monthly fee, no minimum term lock in, and no minimum turnover requirement. A straight forward charge of 2.75% and a one off cost of £100 (+VAT) (currently £29 +VAT for their introductory offer) are the only outgoings you will ever see for this solution. If you are a company that relies on cash and invoice/bank payment transactions, but wish to offer a card service on the side to capture those customers whom you might otherwise loose, then this solution is for you. As there is no cost of upkeep, after you have paid out for the card reader, you do not have to worry about taking a minimum amount to cover the cost of the service or any reoccurring monthly fees

If your company relies heavily on Credit card transactions and have an annual turnover large enough to justify the annual cost of a card terminal, then you might be better off going with a more corporate solution.

Cost comparison

When you compare Intuit Pay to established Point of Sale (POS) solutions from larger business banking companies, then the per-card rates can seem a little high. A number of these POS solutions also charge a fixed amount on top of the per-transaction rate. For example: a debit card transaction with one might cost only 2%, but a charge of 40p per transaction is applied on top. Credit card payments from VISA and MasterCard might only charge at 2%. On top of all this, there could be a monthly rental charge to keep the Chip & PIN reader, and a minimum monthly total transaction value that has to be met. While Intuit Pay would not be the most cost effective solution for those who are turning over £1000+ per week in credit / debit card transactions, for the smaller business doing less than this, Intuit Pay is perfect. No monthly cost and no minimum  transaction value per month means that if you dont use Intuit Pay, then you simply dont pay anything. The 2.75% fixed fee per transaction helps for Micro transactions too, as there is no fixed cost on top of the percentage they already take.

Intuit Pay Chip & PIN Device

The Chip and PIN device is manufactured by Miura Systems Ltd, and appears to be a slightly earlier version of the Chip & PIN unit that is shipped by iZettle. The device is a split matte / glossy grey and blue plastic unit 9.5 x 7 x 1.75 CM (H x W x D) with a square bottom / top and curved (almost ergonomic) left and right sides. It has a 4.3CM green/grey LCD display and 13 buttons on its face, a Micro USB plug for charging and a charging LED indicator on its right side, a blue recessed power button and reset button on its left side. The reader features a chip reader on the bottom of the device (the cards clip in securely) as well as a magnetic swipe reader across the top of the unit. The unit has the Intuit Pay printed in white on the front and embossed onto the glossy plastic on the back with a matte inlay finish.

When comparing this unit to the iZettle device with its OLED display, the Intuit device feels and looks and feels far more premium, and more like a chip-and-pin reader should, while the iZettle device has an air that the black acrylic case was more of an after-thought than a design decision. The Intuit device also fits far nicer in the hand than the iZettle unit. My only concern with the Intuit device uses an LCD instead of an OLED. This might prove difficult to read on bright sunny days. The OLED will definitely outperform the LCD in low / no light situations, which might make the Intuit Pay device unusable.

The Miura units have specific firmware installed on them (presumably to encrypt communication between the Reader and the App) that mean the readers only function with the App provided by the company you purchase the reader from. An Intuit Reader will not work with the iZettle App, or vice versa.

There is no word from Intuit on battery life, but it should be virtually the same as the iZettle unit that is reported to support up to 150 transactions on a single charge. You can charge the unit using the included MicroUSB cable, and the reader can be used while it is charging

Setting up the Chip & PIN Device

Once you push the power button, it takes around 40 seconds for the Chip & PIN reader to start up and reach the ‘Open app to start’ screen. At this point you can either pair the unit with your smartphone / tablet, or start the Intuit Pay App (which automatically establishes a Bluetooth link to the unit if it is already paired) for it to be used.

To unpair / make the unit discoverable for pairing with your smartphone or tablet, power on the reader by pressing the power button. Once the reader has started up and the Intuit logo has been replaced by the ‘Open app to start’ text, hold down the Yellow < (Back) button for 5 seconds and you will be asked whether you want to ‘Remove Bluetooth Pairing?’. Clicking Yes will remove the existing pairing and make the device discoverable. At this point you can pair your reader just like you would pair a Bluetooth Headset. You can cancel this action after you have held down the Yellow < (Back) key  by pressing the Red X (X) button at any time. This will not delete the previous pairing. You can only have one pairing on the Reader and cannot switch between two phones/ tablets without re-pairing it.

It is worth mentioning that the Chip & PIN Reader is not linked to a single Intuit Pay account. You pair the reader with your phone or tablet, and the App links to your account. You could loan your reader to friend with Intuit Pay and they could use the reader with their own Intuit Pay account.

To power off the reader, press the power button once and the reader will ask you to confirm the power off action with the green ‘Tick’ key (yes) or to deny it with the Red ‘X’ (no) key. Inaction for 30 seconds will return the reader to its previous screen.

Intuit Pay very helpfully did a brief YouTube video on pairing your card reader.

Updating the Card Reader – First time Setup

When you first receive your card reader you will need to pair it to your phone / tablet, and then run ‘Update Card Reader’ which will be displayed on the front page of the Intuit Pay Smartphone App if you have not already updated the reader. Updating the reader is a very straight-forward process.

Ensure the reader is powered on and paired to your smartphone with the Intuit App running on it.

Click ‘Set up card reader’ on the home screen (first time setup only) or for subsequent updates go to ‘Settings > Update Card Reader’.

The card reader update process will begin. The card reader will restart two or more times during this process. The app will automatically report once the update is complete.

The choice that Intuit Pay to allow the user to update the device is important, as this will allow Intuit to add more functionality and fix bugs further down the line. Currently neither iZettle nor Payleven allow the user to update the firmware on the Miura Systems Chip & PIN devices.

Intuit Pay Smartphone App

Like most Mobile Payment solution apps, Intuit’s comes in two flavours. One for Android, and one for iPhone. The iPhone version reportedly supports all iOS devices, while the Android version is a little limiting, presently only supporting the Samsung Galaxy range (not the Note II or the S4 yet), and the Nexus phones. Currently no Android Tablets are supported. Other solution providers (even Payleven) have left Intuit Pay in the dust for device support now, but I expect this to change in the coming months as their app grows and develops.

The version I will be using for this review is the Android version, running on a Samsung Galaxy Note 16GB.

When you first start the app you are asked whether you already have an account or if you would like to sign up for one. Having already signed up online I was unable to test the signup procedure through the App. Once you have signed in with your credentials you are greeted by the app home screen which will prompt you to ‘Set up business’ and ‘Set up card reader’. If (like me) you’ve installed the app shortly after signing up for the service, you wont have received the card reader yet and wont be able to set it up yet. In this instance the app has very limited functionality  It does not allow you to perform any sort of transaction without having a card reader, and even though you can perform Card-not-Present transactions through the web portal, you cannot through the app. I do hope that (given you can sign up for online card-not-present payments only without getting the card reader) you will be able to use the app for this functionality in a future release.

Business Setup

The first place most people will visit is the Set Up Business wizard. From here the App will guide you through giving your store a name, adding your logo, choosing a background for the application (this should really be under ‘settings’ as its not related to the business setup, nor customer facing in any way), and Customise your receipt message.

During this process I got slightly confused during the ‘Customise your receipt message. As I had never seen an Intuit Pay receipt I had no point of reference, and did not know what this message was that I would be altering. A preview of the receipt would be very helpful here.

Once you have completed your Business Setup, you can always go back and adjust your choices by going to the ‘Settings’ screen of the App. I would recommend this as there are a lot more options shown here, and the descriptions on each field are far more intuitive than the ones on the ‘Set Up Business’ wizard.

Taking your first payment

Intuit Pay very helpfully did a very useful YouTube video on taking your first payment, which is displayed below. The video was made using the iPhone App, though the principles are the same

Item Catalog

Intuit Pay are the first mobile payment operator to the table with an Android Product Catalog. Their offering is relatively straight forward and has some nice features.

To add a product, from the Home Screen go to ‘Manage Items’ and then press the ‘+’ button in the top right corner. You can now enter an Item Name, a Description, Price, assign it a category (only one category per item) and assign it a picture from your gallery or take a new photo through your devices camera.

Currently there is no way of creating product variations, which would be one of the most helpful additions to the Item Catalog.

When you add items to your catalog your Payment screen changes to reflect the item catalog along with the category list below the total amount displayed at the top of the screen. This new view hides the amount entry keypad unless you click the ‘Enter £’ button which allows you to enter an amount for a non-catalog item. You can enter multiple amounts by pressing ‘Next’ and then ‘Enter £’ after every transaction. These items will appear as ‘Misc’ on the receipt and you cannot enter a description for them.

You cannot currently sync your item catalog between devices, and if you loose or upgrade your phone you will need to recreate your entire item catalog.

To edit an existing catalog item, long press the item and it will allow you to edit the picture, description and price.

To delete an item; click the product and select ‘Delete’

Discounts

Discounts can be added during checkout by the seller. Once you have added all the items / amounts to the basket you can add a discount as a percentage or as a fixed amount.

Gratuity

Once the total amount has been confirmed by the merchant the total amount is passed to the Chip & PIN. The customer can see the total amount before they enter their card into the reader. Once they do and the card has been verified they will be prompted to enter a gratuity (tip). It defaults to £0.00 so the user can simply hit the green button to pass through this screen, or enter an amount using the keypad followed by the green button. The amount is then added to the total amount and the final total displayed to the customer before they enter their PIN. The gratuity amount is not displayed to the merchant until the transaction has been confirmed and the receipt is processed.

Gratuity can be turned on or off from the settings menu in the App.

Receipts

Once the final amount has been processed and the card payment confirmed, the seller is given the opportunity to send the customer a digital receipt via email. This step can be optionally skipped, though providing a customer with a receipt is a requirement. A digital receipt should suffice but some customers may also want a paper receipt. Currently there is no printer support through the app.

Payment History

A full payment history can be accessed from the App. This includes transactions made through the app and transactions made through the Card-not-Present Web Portal. Once in a receipt you can

Refunds

Refunds (for card and card-not-present payments) can be processed directly through the app. At present only full refunds can be processed, and you cannot do per-item or part refunds.

Intuit Pay Web Portal

If there is one area that Intuit does not yet shine in, it is their Web Portal. The functionality is basic, however I would expect this area of their service to grow in time. You currently reach the Web Portal by signing in through the Intuit UK Website. Once you have signed in you are greeted by a dashboard with two options. ‘History’ and ‘Take Payment’.

Card-not-Present transactions

This is one area of the Intuit Pay Web Portal (and service as a whole) that really shines when comparing to other solutions such as iZettle and Payleven. Neither of these companies (yet) offer card-nor-present transactions. Their terms and conditions strictly forbid this action.

To take a Card-not-Present transaction, go to the ‘Take Payment’ tab at the top of the portal. Now enter the Amount, Card Number, Expiry Date, Cardholder Name and Security Code. Optionally enter a Memo (this is not published to the customer). Now click ‘Authorise payment’. The card payment should now proceed. On the next screen you can

Payment History

You can review individual transactions through the web portal history page. At a glance you can see Payment date, card type (including last four digits) and amount. You can also see if the transaction was a Sale or a refund. The Name field remains blank for card transactions and is only filled in for Card-not-present transactions. It would be good to see the transaction reference or a receipt number displayed here for quick visual scanning.

When you click on an individual transaction you are shown the only the total payed amount receipt. Itemised products or gratuity are not shown on here.

Reporting

There is currently no reporting functionality through the web portal. You cannot view a total amount of sales per month / week / day. To do this you will currently need to transfer the data to a spreadsheet or accounting package to track your totals. There is also not yet a way to export the data in a CSV or Quickbooks format for easy importing into your favourite software.

Refunds

Refunds (for card and card-not-present payments) can be processed directly through the web portal. To refund a transaction, simply open up the transaction and click the ‘refund’ button. Partial refunds cannot yet be done. This can be a problem should a customer wish to return just part of an order.

Item Catalog

This is unfortunately absent from the Web Portal. Managing / inputting any significant number of products via a smartphone can prove difficult. I would highly recommend that Intuit add this functionality to bring their App and their Web Portal into cohesion.

Receipts

When you process a payment, the merchant is prompted to enter the customers email address to send them an e-receipt. These receipts are delivered by email. They look almost identical to the preview you see through the website, however the receipts contain a fair number of customisable fields.

The receipt is sent with the From and Reply address set to whatever email address you used to sign up to Intuit Pay. A user can send an email to the company simply by hitting ‘reply’.

In the receipt is the usual transaction details as well as an itemised receipt. The photos from the Item Catalog are missing from this, but its questionable if you would ever need / want them in a receipt. At the top of the receipt is a Google Map showing the location of where the transaction took place. This is absent from receipts using the Card-not-Present payment method.

On the receipt, a number of fields can be customised, including links to social networks. You can customise your ‘Receipt Message’ (shown at the bottom of the receipt and the ‘Returns and Legal Message’ (not shown in the example above).  The social network links are currently limited to Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. I would like to see more networks (especially Google+) added. Finally you have the option of recommending Intuit Pay to customers (not shown in the example above).

Receiving your money from Intuit Pay

According to Intuit’s website, money should be transfered through daily BACS payments and takes five working days to arrive in your account.

We’ll send your money via daily BACS transfers, using the bank details you gave us when you signed up:

1. We add up your transactions at the end of each day.
2. We also calculate our fees and deduct them from the total.
3. We initiate a transfer to send the balance to your bank account.
4. Funds usually take around five working days to arrive in your bank account.

Your Intuit Pay statements will show which transactions each payment covers and how we calculated the total. You can also view this information online.

I am unable to comment on or confirm this as I am yet to receive payment from Intuit Pay as I have not yet had the service long enough.

Bugs

• Moving away from the Intuit Pay app and then returning to it a little time later causes the App to crash (app timeout?)
• During ‘Business Setup’ process, ‘Receipt Message’ field defaults to ‘First Letter Capital’ for every word typed. This does not happen when using the ‘Receipt Customisation’ screen in Settings.
• After completing a transaction the seller is given the option to send a receipt to the customer. Currently the email address entry screen still allows keyboards to put in automatic spaces and auto capitalisation.
• No context given for ‘Receipt Message’ under ‘Business Setup’ wizard.
• Some settings do not yet sync via the cloud – E.g: ‘Always send a copy of my email receipt to:’ field under ‘Receipt Customisation
• No cloud-sync for Item Catalog.
• No PNG support in web receipts – Transparent areas currently show black instead of transparency. In-App receipts work fine
• In a situation where the app is already open / signed in and the reader is powered on afterwards, the app will not establish a connection to the reader unless you close and then reopen (and subsequently sign in again to) the app.
• If the app / phone goes to sleep, the connection between the reader and phone is lost, forcing you to restart the app to reestablish a connection to the reader.
• When adding an existing picture to a Catalog Item, the gallery interface becomes ‘really’ slow and unresponsive.
• New photos are downscaled a little too much when adding them to a catalog item.

Improvements I would like to see

Intuit Pay is very currently App driven, and far less website driven. The biggest change I would like to see is a far better balance between the App and the Website, and the implementation of what I would consider to be some very basic functionality.

General changes

• Ability to modify a catalog item via the App (and Website) to let you change Item Name, Photo, Description and Price.
• Addition of Product Variations so that you can have a single product but various different variations of it (e.g: in different sizes) with different prices but a single picture / title / description
• A section to the product catalog that allows you to create a group of ‘options’ that are available to certain products. e.g: For a canvas, you might have the option of a Glossy Finish that would add a £5 surcharge to the price of a canvas.
• VAT options so you can automatically turn on / off VAT charging depending on whether your business is VAT Registered or not.
• Add the option for ‘Staff Accounts’ so that you can have multiple points of sale signed in to sell products simultaneously.
• Ability to log cash / cheque payments through the App and through the web portal – this would allow you to use the system as a full Point-of-Sale record keeping system for all purchases / refunds.
• Add the ability to do partial refunds and/or refunds by item. Currently if a customer purchases three items and wants to refund just one, you have to refund the entire purchase.

Web Portal changes

• Ability to manage Catalog Items from the website (this would require that the catalog items are cloud-synced)
• Access to the Product Catalog on the Web Portal so you can sell Catalog Items to customers using the Card-not-Present sell option
• Ability to add Descriptions and Itemised billing – Ideally closely linked to the Product Catalog feature request.
• Ability to search by Transaction Number
• Change the receipt view so that you can view an itemised breakdown of any receipt.

App changes

• Cloud-Syncing of account settings such as Catalog Items,
• During the ‘Business Setup’ process, the section ‘Receipt Message’ is very cryptic. Please provide a description of what this does
• Signing into an account on two devices signs out the first account – change this or add the ability for Staff Accounts.
• Change the App Timeout system to lock down the app with a Pincode – entering a full (secure) password when trying to check out a customer is prohibitively time consuming.
• Ability to preview receipt after customising it in ‘Receipt Customisation’.
• Ability to handle ‘Card-not-Present’ transactions through the App so that business who operate on-the-move can still process these without needing to fall back to the web portal
• Implement ‘Change Password’ functionality through the app.
• Option to give manual payment entries a description instead of ‘misc’
• You can save a customers email address to a contact card, but cannot later recall this information when processing another order. Please add address book access for sending receipts.

Receipt changes

• PNG support to allow for transparent logos – Currently these appear on web receipts with Black in the transparent areas.
• Addition of ‘Google+ Page Link’ in the Receipt Customisation
• Addition of Custom Links (one field for Heading, another for the URL) in the Receipt Customisation.
• Addition of (an optional) Google Maps image on customer receipt showing the business location, and/or the location where the transaction was made.
• Addition of Receipt Number that is unique to each company presence instead of using the Transaction Number which is a number that applies to every transaction ever made by everyone under Intuit Pay.
• Receipt subject line should report company name and receipt number
• Ability to fully customise the receipt (including subjet) using %data% variables. This interface could be easily driven through the web portal.
• Ability to print paper receipts through the app (Android and iOS)

Conclusion

I feel it is important to point out that while the Intuit solution does have a number of small bugs, none of these detract from what really is a very good solution. The impression I get from Intuit Pay (especially when comparing it to the likes of iZettle and Payleven) is that Intuit Pay is in its infancy. It has a bit of a way to go before its App and Web Portal can compete with the established solution from iZettle, however it has a vast amount of potential, and possibly more so than the competition. For a start their willingness to allow Card-not-Present transactions is a real feather in their cap when comparing them to the competition. The whole Intuit system feels more professional and open where as the iZettle system feels very ‘let us do it all for you because you dont know what you’re doing’. I feel this is where iZettle’s mix of advertising to Home Users as well as Business Users will be their undoing for the business market. This difference in target markets is particularly obvious in the Intuit Pay Receipt Customisation and Business Setup screens.

There are some bugs, yes, and my list of things I would like to see is extensive, but this should not put you off using this service. If the development team behind the app and web portal take on board even half of the items in this list, then they will have a killer service that will manage to pull a lot of business away from the likes of iZettle and Payleven.The key is going to be developing a rock solid and feature-rich service before PayPal get their act together and release their Chip & PIN unit.

Links

• Intuit Pay UK Homepage
• Intuit Pay UK Facebook Page
• Intuit Pay Android App (Google Play)
• Intuit Pay iOS App (Apple App Store)

Updates

I will continue to update this review as the product improves. If there is a particular area you would like me to cover in more detail or a feature you feel I have missed out, please leave me a Comment below and I will do what I can.

13/04/13 – Added section on Receipts. Corrected some minor typos.

12/04/13 – Original review posted

Disclaimer

All screenshots are taken from the Android version of the Intuit App, using a Samsung Galaxy Note

This review is not sponsored or commissioned by Intuit Ltd or any of their affiliated companies.

Intuit Pay Chip & PIN – Review Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

In 2010 I worked with After Dark Productions, a film company in North London, on a short film project called ‘The Sofa’. I was originally brought in as a Behind the Scenes (BtS) photographer, but I soon gained an acting role in the production, and also as a Second Assistant Director.

The film has finally been through post-production, and can now be seen below:

The Sofa, a short film by After Dark Productions Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

Ever since starting my own business I have been looking for a way to take payments by card, without having the monthly expense and contractual obligation of operating a Chip & PIN reader from a Business Banking account. Six months ago I came across iZettle; a relatively new startup that promised a mobile card payment solution without monthly cost.

When I first investigated the solution from iZettle, the only payment method on offer was a Chip & Signature reader. This has a number of shortfalls, such as the inability to accept VISA payments through the signature reader, requiring the customer to have an internet enabled phone to process the VISA payment. With the promise of the technology improving I signed up anyway, and last month iZettle released their Wireless Chip & PIN reader with full support for VISA and Mastercard payments. With this new device, I am pleased to report that all concerns I had over the shortcomings of the solution have been laid to rest.

Below is my review of what I believe is a game-changing product for anyone running a small business, with detailed information on the how the process works from the perspective of the customer and seller.

iZettle Chip PIN Reader

Who is it for?

iZettle is one of those interesting products that has two clear target markets. The first (and most obvious) is the small business provider who wants to begin offering card payment options to his/her customers. These users will apply for a ‘Business Account’

The other target market is for home users who want to be able to take card payments for things like car-boots and other uses that dont really fall under the ‘home business’ front (though technically if you’re taking payments doesn’t that class you a business?). These users will apply for a ‘Personal Account’

The difference between the two accounts is the amount you can take per transaction and total amount per day. The differences are detailed further on.

For the business target market, many people have voiced their opinion that iZettle (and it’s competitors) has a high cost per Transaction (2.75%) where card terminals from other banking providers have a lower cost of less than 2%. The disadvantage with these larger business-oriented banking terminals is that they have a monthly rental fee for the terminal, and often come with a minimum contract term of 1 year and a minimum turnover per month. iZettle has no monthly fee, no minimum term lock in, and no minimum turnover requirement. A straight forward charge of 2.75% and a one off cost of £100 (+VAT) are the only outgoings you will ever see for this solution. To me this says that if you are a company that relies on cash and invoice/bank payment transactions, but wish to offer a card service in the side to capture those customers whom you might otherwise loose, then this solution is for you. You also have the advantage of being able to run a service with no cost of upkeep. After you have paid out for the card reader, you do not have to worry about taking a minimum amount to cover the cost of the service.

If your company relies heavily on Credit card transactions and have an annual turnover large enough to justify the annual cost of a card terminal, then you might be better off going with a more corporate solution.

Cost comparison

As I explained above, when you compare iZettle to established Point of Sale (POS) solutions from larger business banking companies, then the per-card rates can seem a little high. A number of these POS solutions also charge a fixed amount on top of the per-transaction rate. For example: a debit card transaction with one might cost only 2%, but a charge of 40p per transaction is applied on top. Credit card payments from VISA and MasterCard might only charge at 2% but American Express might be 3.5%. On top of all this, there could be a monthly rental charge to keep the Chip & PIN reader, and a minimum monthly total transaction value that has to be met. While iZettle would not be the most cost effective solution for those who are turning over £1000+ in credit / debit card transactions per month, however for the smaller business doing less than this, iZettle is perfect. No monthly cost and no minimum  transaction value per month means that if you dont use iZettle, then you simply dont pay anything. The 2.75% fixed fee per transaction helps for Micro transactions too, as there is no fixed cost on top of the percentage.

The Competition

Since Square launched in the US, a number of companies have tried bringing mobile payment solutions to the UK. Most of these began (like Square) as a swipe card solution or as a Chip and Signature solution. In the last two months, the market has exploded with companies offering mobile payment solutions with a wireless Chip & PIN reader. One such example is Payleven (who appear to me to be iZettle’s major rival).  Payleven were slightly faster out of the gate marketing their Chip and PIN reader, however iZettle is already an established brand in the UK (having their devices for sale in EE stores around the country), and offer a more complete payment solution when it comes to the types of card accepted. Additionally their App is far more developed than the rival Payleven App, which is currently only working on only 4 Android devices (though their team are reported to be working on increasing support).

 Information correct as of March 2013

As you can see, iZettle comes across as one of the more complete Mobile payment solutions, offering payment on all major card types and some of the less widely accepted ones.
Worldpay offer a solution with lower / no rates for a £5/£10 per month charge, however they currently do not appear to accept such a wide range of card types.

At time of testing, American Express payments are not yet functional on the iZettle solution – this is due to be rectified shortly

Information on the PayPal solution is based on best-guess information and not provided from any official source.

The iZettle technology – The Chip & PIN reader

The iZettle Chip & PIN Reader device is a black acrylic unit 9.5 x 7 x 1.75 CM (H x W x D). It has a 3.5CM OLED display and 13 buttons on its face, plus a Micro USB plug for charging / diagnostic log access, a reset button, a power button, a charging LED indicator, and two recessed metal contacts which I presume are for charging using a base station. The reader features a chip reader along the bottom of the reader (the cards clip in securely) as well as a magnetic swipe reader across the top of the unit. The Chip & PIN unit itself is manufactured by Miura Systems, and is branded iZettle.

The reader is identical to those devices provided by Worldpay, Payleven and a number of other Mobile Payment Solution providers. The Miura Chip and PIN devices have specific firmware installed on them (presumably to encrypt communication between the Reader and the App) that mean the readers only function with the App provided by the company you purchase the reader from. An iZettle Reader will not work with the Payleven App, or vice versa.

The reader seems well made, however its piano black finish is ‘very’ prone to scratching (as I expect is the screen). Purchasers of the unit will want to find a little protective case for the unit as quickly as possible.

Battery life is reported to support up to 150 transactions on a single charge. You can charge the unit using the included MicroUSB cable, and the reader can be used while it is charging.

My only concern with the unit is that its looks differ significantly from other Chip & PIN terminals used in businesses. This could potentially put the more security-savvy people off the unit for now as they will be unfamiliar with it, and might regard it with suspicion (especially if they see it is linked to your phone).

Other than these minor points, the reader is very well made and incredibly well sized. It is portable device that could very easily fit into your business life, slipping into your bag briefcase or pocket.

Security

I admit that I know little about Card Payment security, however the iZettle reports that it complies with the minimum regulations, which certainly seem to be enough to support MasterCard and VISA Payments.

The following is an excerpt from iZettle on security.

iZettle is just as secure as other card terminals. The service is EMV approved and complies with PCI DSS regulations. No sensitive data is ever stored on the mobile device, and all data traffic is encrypted.

Another area that iZettle seem to have covered is with Data Protection. The seller is prompted to enter a customers email address so that an email receipt can be sent to them. After the entry has been completed and submitted, the email address is not made available to the seller. This protects the customer by preventing any nefarious sellers from harvesting this data or signing up customers to unsolicited email shots.

Working with the iZettle Solution

Setting up the iZettle Chip & PIN reader

Once you push the power button, it takes around 45 seconds for the Chip & PIN reader to start up and reach the ‘Welcome’ screen. At this point you can either pair the unit with your smartphone / tablet, or start the iZettle App (which automatically establishes a Bluetooth link to the unit) for it to be used.

To pair / re-pair the unit with your smartphone or tablet, power on the reader by pressing the power button. Once the reader has started up and the iZettle logo has been replaced by the ‘Welcome’ text, hold down the Green Tick (O) button for 5 seconds and the Bluetooth icon will start to flash. This makes the unit discoverable by other Bluetooth devices. At this point you can pair your reader just like you would pair a Bluetooth Headset. You can cancel this pair / re-pair action after you have made the unit discoverable by pressing the Red X (X) button. This will not delete the previous pairing. You can only have one pairing on the Reader and cannot switch between two phones that are paired to it. You must pair it to a new tablet/phone every time you wish to change.

It is worth mentioning that the Chip & PIN Reader is not linked to a single iZettle account. You pair the reader with your phone or tablet, and the App on there links to your account. You could loan your reader to friend with iZettle and they could use the reader with their own private or business iZettle account.

Taking a Card Payment with the iZettle Chip & PIN reader

Once you have paired the unit to your phone or tablet, start the iZettle App and your Reader will automatically establish a Bluetooth link to the Chip & PIN unit (On Android, your phone/tablet Bluetooth logo will not indicate any established Bluetooth connection). Now you are ready to take a payment.

1. With the iZettle App open, the seller types the amount they wish to charge into the App Entry screen
   • Optionally enter a description of the product
   • Optionally take a photo of the product or select one from your Gallery on the phone / tablet
   • VAT can optionally be included during the payment at 5% or 20%
2. Ask the customer to insert their card
3. Once the card is inserted, the Sellers App will read ‘Card OK’ and the Chip & PIN reader will report ‘Waiting for amount…’
4. In the App, the seller presses the ‘Charge’ button. The App will process the payment and send the information to the Chip & PIN reader.
5. Once the App has sent the chargable amount to the Chip & PIN reader, the Chip and PIN reader will request PIN entry from the customer.
   • The Chip & PIN reader will display the following to the customer on the PIN Entry screen: Type of card inserted, Amount to be charged, PIN Entry request
   • During the PIN Entry process, the customer can press the Red X (X) button to cancel the transaction, the Yellow Arrow button (<) to clear the last number entered on the PIN, or the Green Tick (O) button to confirm the transaction and PIN entry.
   • During the PIN Entry process, the seller has the option to cancel the transaction from the App
   • During the PIN entry, the Seller App displays four * icons. These icons will highlight with every key-press the customer makes.
   • Upon confirmation of the PIN, the reader will report ‘PIN OK’ to the customer.
6. Once the PIN entry has been completed by the customer, the sellers device will process the card payment. It will report either ‘Approved’ or ‘Rejected’, with the Chip & PIN reader reporting either ‘Approved – Remove Card’ or ‘Declined’ to the customer as appropriate.
   • When the customer removes their card, the Chip & PIN reader reports ‘Thank You’.
7. When the payment is approved, the seller is given the option to enter an email address for an e-receipt to be sent, or this step can be skipped.
   • After a transaction has been completed, the seller can return to the Payment History screen to (re)send a receipt.
   • The customers email address is not stored nor accessible to the seller (staff or master account). More about this later.
8. Lastly, the App will display your company logo with a green tick, followed by ’Thank You!’ and the total amount paid, showing that the payment has been completed successfully.

You can now process a new payment.

Multiple Products, Single transaction

There is a shortfall in the current revision of the App if you are selling multiple products or services in a single transaction. The current lack of the Product Catalog and the Android version of the iZettle App means there is no way to create an itemised receipt for the customer. This feature is due to be added to the Android App around the March / April, but until then a single description field will have to suffice. The Product Catalog has already been implemented on the iOS (Apple) version of the iZettle App. You can add products from your Product Catalog and they will be itemised on your receipt. Unfortunately the product catalog does not help if you wish to sell multiple adhoc items/services. You cannot enter a description per item along with a value per item. You are forced into using a single Description field with no method to itemise individual items.

Bugs

• The reader will automatically go to sleep by turning off the display if it is not used for a minute or two. Simply press a button to wake it back up. In testing, if you cancel the transaction from the App before the customer has entered their PIN, the Chip & PIN reader will not immediately cancel the PIN entry request. It will reset after about 20 seconds.
• In testing I could not get the unit to sleep while on the ‘Insert/swipe card’ screen (paired with the app). Even if the phone went to sleep, as long as the bluetooth connection was maintained, the Chip & PIN reader would not sleep. This could be a problem if you are using it on and off during the whole day, though a passive Bluetooth connection shouldn’t draw too much power. This could be fixed in a future firmware / app update though.

Transaction limits

iZettle’s Chip & PIN solution has certain transaction limits imposed on it. I am unsure whether this is typical for all Chip & PIN solutions, however it is certainly the case for Mobile Payments using a Chip and PIN solution, or indeed any mobile solution.

iZettle’s limits are imposed based on the type of account you have (Personal or Business) and whether you’re using the current Chip & PIN Solution, the current solution with the magnetic swipe reader, or the previous solution based on the Chip & Signature solution. While I have not covered the Chip & Signature solution in my review, I feel it is important to highlight the differences as many customers have asked the question on iZettle’s Facebook page.

The following information is summarised from the iZettle FAQ on How much money can I accept? and How much do I pay to use iZettle?

Business Accounts

Private Accounts

Alternative Payment Methods

The app allows you to take payments through Card via the card reader or by entering the details manually (there are delays with fund transfers from transactions done this way), or you can record cash payments using the app. This gives you a decent Point Of Sale record system for taking note of your card and cash payments. I will not go into detail about these methods as the screenshots sum them up nicely, and the process should not deviate too far from the Chip & PIN payment procedure. The option of ‘Taking a VISA Payment’ I have not covered as it is only relevant if you are still using the older iZettle Chip & Signature reader.

Customer Receipts

Receipts can be optionally sent from the App at time of payment, or from the Payment History screen in the App. If the seller has already entered an email address for the customer, it will still prompt for the email address entry if the seller chooses to resend the receipt. This allows for multiple receipts to be sent should the customer require it.

The customer receipts are sent as an email which include your company name and logo, the date and time of the transaction, the description of the item (if entered), the picture of the item (if entered) and the amount charged for the item with a total amount below the item list.  The receipt also includes a small unobtrusive banner advertising the iZettle service. This could be seen as useful as the customer could then find out a bit more about the payment scheme you use, however some business owners may find this a slightly unprofessional approach.

If a customer wishes to email the company they have received the receipt from, then the Name of the Company (shown in bold blue text above the address) is a mailto hyperlink that starts a new email to the address that was specified in the Master account (Staff account email addresses are never revealed to the customer). Unfortunately a customer cannot simply reply to the email receipt to contact the company as it is sent from the iZettle email address hello@izettle.com, with your company name in the From field. The ‘reply-to’ address is set to hello@izettle.com and not the email address given in your Master account  This could confuse a customer who quickly wishes to follow up on a receipt.

In the email, the customer is given a link to ‘View detailed receipt’. This will take the customer to the iZettle web site, and gives a more detailed breakdown of the transaction. This includes The Name and Address of the company, a company logo, Telephone and Email address as well as a link to the companies website. A map is displayed showing the location of where the transaction took place. A cost breakdown of the transaction appears here, including the amount of VAT (if applicable), the details of the card used (only the last four digits visible), and various reference numbers.

• Staff account email addresses are not displayed or used anywhere on receipts or available to the customer.
• I would recommend registering iZettle to a central account that is used to send out payment information (e.g: store@<companyname>.<tld>). This address is available to customers to reply to in their receipt.

Customer Bank Statement

A completed transaction will appear on the customers bank statement in a few working days. When I tested the unit, the following appeared on my statement. The last four digits (pixelated in the image below) are the last four digits from the card used to pay. We can assume that CD stands for Card or Card, Debit. The company name appears before this but is truncated, and the IZ before that indicated iZettle.

Customer Bank Statement

Other App features

The app includes a small number of other features, including in-built help and FAQ screens. Also included are Payment Histories and Reports.

Payment History

The app contains a full Payment History screen, where you can view a full list of your transactions. You can also search your payments by Amount, Reference number or by the last 4 digits of the card that was used for Payment. When you drill down into an individual payment, you can see the Status of a payment, the last 4 digits of the card number, a reference number, TVR and AID number, a summary of the product(s) sold, and a map showing where the transaction took place. You can choose to send a receipt from here, or even process a refund (within the pre-allotted time period).

Reports

The app also features the ability to generate reports by day or by month. The report can then be emailed from the app to any address of your choosing. This attaches the report as a PDF file instead of forcing you to go through the web interface.

iZettle Web Portal

When you sign up to iZettle you are given access to their web portal. This is the method to administer your account, delegate access to Staff, manage changes to your company details, and to pull off sales figures and reports. You can view your payments taken, and deposits made to your bank account. You can also manage your Product Catalog.

• The iZettle Web Portal is not available to Staff accounts.

Reporting

The reporting functionality of the iZettle Web Portal is straight forward. You can view reports on sales by Day, Week or Month, and download these figures in an Excel spreadsheet by clicking the button below the report window you have requested. When viewing payments, you can drill down into each individual payment to display an itemised view of the payment (similar to that which the customer receives by email). The customers email address is shown masked, with only the first letter and provider displayed.

• There is currently no way to Search payments through the Web Portal
• You cannot send a receipt to a new email address, only resend the receipt to the first email address (as entered during the transaction process).
• You have the option to print individual receipts, but not the summary of the Day / Week / Month unless you export to Excel first.

Product Catalog

The Product Catalog is a quick and easy method of building up your Point of Sale solution to enable very quick processing of items when processing a transaction. You can create a Product in the catalog, assign a picture to it and a Value. You can also create variants of a product; so you can have sub products that each have the same main description but can have different values and sub descriptions assigned to them.

• Your product catalog is cached in the App on your phone/tablet. This means bandwidth requirements for the app are kept to the minimum.
• When creating Product Variants through the web portal, each variant uses the main Product picture.
• For sellers who pre-sell products and rely on shipping the item to a customer, you will need to create a Shipping item (possibly with variants) to handle this.
  • There is also no Shipping calculator, so if you charge a base rate then extra per weight/product, you will have to calculate this manually.

Receiving your money from iZettle

Payments made to you are deposited to your nominated account seven banking days after transactions are made. The following is from the iZettle FAQ on When do I get my money?

Private account
If the transactions are made with the Chip & PIN reader:
A maximum of £1,000 is available on your bank account seven banking days after the transactions were made.

Business account
If the transactions are made with the Chip & PIN reader:
A maximum of £25,000 is available on your bank account seven banking days after the transactions were made.

If the transactions are for more than £1,000/£25,000, then another maximum of £1,000/£25,000 will be deposited to you the bank day after the first deposit was made. This will go on until all of your money has been deposited.

Note that the money is deposited to you four banking days after the transaction was made, it is then available in your bank account within three banking days. This means that the money is available in your bank account within seven banking days.

Manual transactions take longer to complete, with a maximum of £25 available on your bank account seven banking days after the transactions were made. The remainder will be deposited approximately 10 banking days later.​ It is unlikely that a seller will need to use this method unless the card Chip and magnetic swipe are both damaged. In this instance I would recommend asking for another card.

(The above does not apply to the Chip & Signature reader)

Improvements I would like to see

• Product Catalog for Android devices (iZettle have reported this feature is Coming soon)
• Desktop application so that a computer-based Point of Sale terminal could be easily used – this is important for sellers who rely on a laptop, and could lead to desktop based Point of Sale units for businesses with fixed locations.
• A slightly more useful Web Portal, with some options added that are in the App but not in the Web Interface
• Improvement of the Deposits screen on the Web Portal so you can itemise which Payments are being paid to you in each deposit.
• The ability to enter multiple adhoc items (multiple descriptions + photos) each with their own individual price.
• A section to the product catalog that allows you to create a group of ‘options’ that are available to certain products. e.g: For a canvas, you might have the option of a Glossy Finish that would add a £5 surcharge to the price of a canvas.
• For those business who are doing pre-sales, a basic shipping cost calculator would be very useful. E.g: If you process 3 canvases for delivery to a customer, the first canvas would charge a base rate of £10 shipping, then £3 per extra canvas.
• Ability to customise receipts
• Change of the ‘Reply to’ Address in Email receipts so that customers can reply straight back to the company instead of replying to ‘hello@izettle.com’
• Ability to have an Address Book of sorts so that business with regular customers or an existing customer database can quickly and easily retrieve email addresses from it. (this might not have been implemented due to Data Protection and the ability to store information / purchase habits for customers)

Links

• iZettle GB Homepage
• iZettle Facebook Page
• iZettle Android App (Google Play)
• iZettle iOS App (Apple App Store)

Updates

I will continue to update this review as the product improves. If there is a particular area you would like me to cover in more detail or a feature you feel I have missed out, please leave me a Comment below and I will do what I can.

05/05/13 – Added Intuit (based on a request from Jonathan Crossley) and Ayden to the comparison table. Added a brief ‘Feature’ list to the comparison table to better differentiate providers / services.

26/04/13 – Updated the price comparison table to reflect the current pricing of the iZettle and Payleven Chip & Pin Units – These were £49.99 + VAT during their promotional periods.

12/04/13 - Transaction Limits and Account Comparison table added. Minor formatting changes

11/04/13 – Information on Security added from the iZettle App Store information. Minor corrections

07/04/13 – Minor corrections made based on feedback from iZettle

Disclaimer

All screenshots are taken from the Android version of the iZettle App, using a Samsung Galaxy Note

The account used in this review is a ‘Business’ account. Private accounts may perform slightly differently than described above.

This review is not sponsored or commissioned by iZettle or any of their affiliated companies.

iZettle Chip & PIN – Review Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

High Street camera retailer Jessops has gone into administration, with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) appointed as the administrator.

The administrators said that it was “inevitable” that some stores would have to close.

Trading in the stores is hoped to continue today but is critically dependent on these ongoing discussions. However, in the current economic climate it is inevitable that there will be store closures.

At present Jessops will not honor customer vouchers or accept returned goods.

A further statement said that 15 stores which do not meet the required level of profitability will unfortunately be closed, although Jessops refused to comment on which stores would be affected.

Extended warranties purchased from Jessops and underwritten by Domestic and General (D&G) will be honored (according to D&G Customer Services).
D&G can be contacted on 08444 810 500 (or 024 7664 3466 for the switchboard – Ask for Customer Services)

Links

• Original BBC News Article
• This is Leicestershire Article
• Jessops Care Plan + Information page
• Talk Photography Forum discussion thread

Jessops High Street camera retailer in Administration Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

For those who purchased OS X Mountain Lion through the App Store and wanted to do a Fresh (Clean) install have probably come across many methods of creating OS X Mountain Lion Bootable USB sticks. The one I have previously used for installation of Lion and Mountain Lion on my home Macs has been the Lion DiskMaker. This software automates the creation of a Bootable Mountain Lion USB key (or CD) using a purchased and downloaded through the Apple App Store.

When I attempted to install Lion using the USB Key I created using Lion DiskMaker I discovered that during the installation I would be prompted to connect to the internet, and then to sign on to a Apple App Store account that has Mountain Lion already purchased (this holds true for installations of Lion too).

There is nothing wrong with this process, as it confirms that you have indeed purchased the software you are trying to install (a form of rudimentary DRM), and for home or single user environments this is perfectly acceptable. However, in certain larger environments (such as corporate networks devoid of central Apple Server infrastructure, or on secure networks), this process is untenable.

Background

If you dont wish to read the preamble, skip straight to the instructions.

As I’m sure many who read my ramblings are aware, I’m a Systems Administrator in the School of Mathematics and Information Security at Royal Holloway. Central Computing Services at Royal Holloway offer a Windows-centric network to the departments within the University, however certain departments with more specialist IT requirements (such as Information Security, Computer Science, Media Arts, etc) have specialist IT Teams as part of their staff to help run their IT systems and to provide a more specialist and focused line of support to the Academic Staff and Students.

In the department I support, the number of Apple Computers requested by staff over the last 2 years has seen a dramatic increase. This is a trend that can be noticed over most departments at our university, and probably at universities nationwide.

Our departments server infrastructure has not however moved in the same direction as our clients. With 2013 right around the corner we find ourselves surrounded by Apple clients and no Apple servers to be seen (at least in our department).

The problem

When we began talking to our account manager at Apple about upgrading our existing Mac’s to Mountain Lion (from a mixture of Snow Leopard and Lion) we were aware of a price-break when purchasing more than a certain number of licenses. To aid other departments (some with less Macs than ourselves) we collated the Mountain Lion requirements of the whole university together so that all departments could take advantage of the price-break by purchasing the licenses all together. On paper, this was perfect.

Once the order was completed, we were emailed a secure PDF document with a single code to retrieve Mountain Lion from the App Store using an Apple App Store account. Unfortunately this code could only be retrieved in a single Apple App Store account, meaning that instead of nearly a dozen System Administrators having access to the software, only one would. Unfortunately giving other Administrators access to this account was not possible, as we’re restricted by the Apple iTunes Terms and Conditions, which state:

As a registered user of the App and Book Services, you may establish an account (“Account”). Don’t reveal your Account information to anyone else. You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of your Account, and for all activities that occur on or through your Account, and you agree to immediately notify Apple of any security breach of your Account. Apple shall not be responsible for any losses arising out of the unauthorized use of your Account.

My first solution to this was simple – use the Lion DiskMaker utility to create bootable USB keys for every Systems Administrator in the university.

Wrong

During testing I discovered that the installation procedure would request access to an Apple App Store account that has purchased Mountain Lion. This brings us back to the original problem with the Terms and Conditions.

My next solution was to contact Apple directly and request a dozen retrieval codes – one for each Systems Administrator that would be Installing / Upgrading the systems across the university.

No luck

Apple informed me that no matter how many licenses were purchased in a single order, only a single retrieval key would be issued. While I disagree with Apple’s decision / policy, I didn’t argue the toss.

The Solution

Apple did however put me in contact with one of their System Engineers, who was at least sympathetic to the issues we faced. After enquiring whether or not we had any Apple Server infrastructure available (presumably to suggest we use System Image Utility with NetBoot images for deployment), he suggested using USB keys to deploy the software. I informed him of Lion DiskMaker and the problem I had discovered requiring access to a Apple App Store account. Apple were aware of Lion DiskMaker, however their staff had been advised to avoid third-party utilities to create bootable USB sticks as they were not Apple utilities.

The engineer did however provide me with guidelines to creating an official OS X Mountain Lion USB Stick. I have since compiled the instructions I received into a cohesive document that will hopefully allow others (especially those looking at Volume Licensing and large scale deployments) to avoid the pitfalls that I experienced when solving this issue.

Building the OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) Install Media

For this, you will require:

• Apple Computer (Desktop or Laptop) running OS X Mountain Lion (Lion and previous operating systems do not have the System Image Utility included)
• An Apple App Store account with a purchased license of OS X Mountain Lion
• USB Stick – 8GB or greater (Remaining space can be used to hold installers for other apps)

For the inexperienced user, this process will take about  45 minutes from start to finish. A rudimentary knowledge of Apple Automator can also be helpful.

• Open the Apple App Store and download Mountain Lion
• Once it has finished downloading, the Mountain Lion installer will automatically start – Close this
• Open Safari (or another web browser) and download the following Automator action: http://macosxautomation.com/automator/examples/pkg/
  createnetrestoredisk/CreateNetRestoreDiskAction.zip
• Unzip the Action. Double click the Action to install it. – You can now delete the ZIP file and the action it extracted – this is already installed into the system
• Insert a 8GB USB Stick. Go to ‘Disk Utility‘ and erase the USB Sticks partitions, replacing it with a single ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ partition filling the whole stick.
• Create a new folder on the desktop called ‘Build‘
• In Finder click Go > Go to folder (top menu bar). enter ‘/System/Library/CoreServices‘ (without the single quotation marks), and click Go
• Double click ‘System Image Utility‘
• Under ‘Sources‘ in the left hand plane you should see Mountain Lion Installer - Highlight this
• In the larger plane on the right side you should now see the option to build three types of image. Select ‘NetInstall Image‘ and click Customize.
  - Now Automator will open giving you a list of actions it will perform.
• Drag the action ‘Create NetRestore Disk’ from the Automator Library into the System Image Utility workflow, dropping it below the ‘Create Image’ action.

System Image Utility with OS X Mountain Lion

Customize System Image Utility with Automator

Completed System Image Utility customization

• Set the variables in the Automator process (see above image for examples)
  • Create Image > Save To: should be set to the Build folder you created earlier.
  • Create NetRestore Disk > Save to: should be set to the partition on the USB Memory stick that you created earlier
• Click run, then go and make yourself a hot beverage – this takes a bit of time.

Installing OS X Mountain Lion (10.8)

Clean Install

• Insert the OS X Mountain Lion USB Stick into the Mac
• Power on the Mac and hold down the Option (Alt) key until the boot selection screen is displayed.
• Using the arrow keys, choose ‘EFI Boot’ and press Return – This will start the Mountain Lion Installer
• Once the Installer has started, choose the appropriate language and click Next.
• Now start ‘Disk Utility’ from the Mac OS X Utilities
• Select the hard disk partition (typically named ‘Macintosh HD’) and erase the contents of the partition, reformatting it as ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’
• Once complete, close Disk Utility and you will be returned to the Mac OS X Utilities screen.
• Now choose ‘Reinstall Mac OS X’
• If prompted, choose the newly reformatted partition as its destination.
• Mac OS X will now be installed.

In-Place Upgrade

Method 1

• Boot into the existing Mac OS X installation on the Mac.
• Insert the OS X Mountain Lion USB Stick
• Open the memory stick, and browse to the NBI Folder (usually ‘NetInstall of Install OS X Mountain Lion.nbi’)
• Double click ‘NetInstall.dmg’ to open it.
• Browse into the NetInstall DMG and run ‘Install OS X Mountain Lion
• Follow the onscreen instructions, entering your Administrator Password where prompted.

Method 2

• Insert the OS X Mountain Lion USB Stick into the Mac
• Power on the Mac and hold down the Option (Alt) key until the boot selection screen is displayed.
• Using the arrow keys, choose ‘EFI Boot’ and press Return – This will start the Mountain Lion Installer
• Once the Installer has started, choose the appropriate language and click Next.
• Now choose ‘Reinstall Mac OS X’
• If prompted, choose the partition already containing Mac OS X as its destination.
• Mac OS X will now be installed over the top of the previous Mac OS instance, effectively upgrading the system and preserving User Accounts, Files and Software.

Building an Official Mountain Lion USB Stick Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

Over the last couple of months I have been redesigning this site from the ground up. This was no simple change of theme, or even a straight forward ‘export content from the old site, import into the new site’. The whole site has been rebuilt from the ground up, with (almost) all the content rewritten and updated.

This project was started so that I could amalgamate both my personal site and the Alopex Productions site into a single site, marketing myself simultaneously as both an I.T. Professional and Photographer. This will give me better visibility through the use of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), a larger portfolio of work and experience, and a more actively developed web presence. I also feels that this lack of segmentation between my professions will allow me to build closer and more open relationships with clients, both current and future.

As part of the migration, a lot of content from the Alopex Productions website has been pulled in. The now obsolete pages (and news posts) on Alopex Productions have had 301 Redirects put in place to redirect traffic to their new location. Social Networking presences have also been updated.

In the coming months, the Alopex Productions site will be closed down completely, with all traffic redirected to tfindley.co.uk .

More information will follow once the migration has been completed.

Out with the Old, In with the New Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

While searching for some more information on a Sekonic Lightmeter, I came across this great instructional webinar by Sekonic, and thought I’d share it:

Control the Light and Improve Your Photography: Part I – Portraiture using Available Light from Sekonic on Vimeo.

Comprehensive Guide to Studio Photography with a Lightmeter Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

At the weekend I was privileged to be at a brief but very instructive bite-sized seminar by Jon Gray. His seminar ran through some of his techniques for shooting very distinct portraits using very minimal equipment. As part of the seminar we took our own shots of the model.

I have published these photos twice. The first eight have had no post-processing or touch-ups. The second eight have been through a slightly stylised process in Lightroom.

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Credits

Model: Katie Green
Organizer & Instructor: Jon Gray
Venue: Park Cameras

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Technical

Two studio strobes were used to light this scene. The first is a Bowens Softlite Reflector with Grid Diffuser firing from frame right in front of Katie. The second is acting as a hair-light, positioned frame left behind Katie with a yellow colour-temperature gel to add warmth to her hair.

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Glamour and Lighting Studio Test with Katie Green

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Glamour and Studio Lighting with Katie Green Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio

I am sorry to report that on Thursday 26th May, Latea of the UK Wolf Conservation Trust passed away in her sleep.

The following is the report from the UK Wolf Trust website: (link) (alternate (pdf))

It is with sadness that we announce the death of Latea, who died in her sleep on Thursday night. Following an examination from the vet, we think she died quickly and peacefully, possibly of a heart attack or aneurysm. Latea had shown no sign of illness and was running around as normal yesterday. We are grateful that the end was a peaceful one.

I owe a great deal to Latea. She featured in my first ever published photo, which appeared on the UK Wolf Conservation Trust website in early 2010 after my first visit to the trust.

I would like to wish everyone at the UK Wolf Trust my best through this time.

R.I.P. Latea, 1999-2011 Tristan Findley - Professional CV / Portfolio