From an article on msn.com:

"With the iPhone's Inner Fence application, even you can accept credit cards. If you want to sell jewelry at the fair or open a booth at the local flea market, this is your chance. It will cost you $50 for the application, plus $15 per month for a payment gateway service and $10 per month for a customer-service processing system."

Granted this isn't a free way to earn miles, but I'm sure some creative minds could use this iPhone app as a way to not have to lug $1 coins to a bank for miles.

I don't own an iPhone, so I have no way of giving any FT'er specifics. Perhaps someone with access to iPhone apps here on FT can shed some light on this iPhone app. Just saw the article on MSN and thought some creative minds on FT could have fun with this.

Depending on the type of credit card you will get dinged at least 1.25% - 3.5% for Amex. Not really worth it unless you get at least $.035 per point / mile.

Not to mention that charging yourself and trying to "launder" points that way is a great way to violate the merchant agreement.

Not to mention iPhone is a pretty insecure way to be transmitting your credit card number!

I don't even get the premise of the original post.

How could this help with the US Mint coin situation?

That is a completely erroneous statement. There are plenty of secure ways of transmitting anything, especially via iPhone, which has full internet access. As long as the connection is encrypted - which is easy to do on an iPhone - you should have no worries.

The premise was to enlighten people on FT about another way to possibly earn miles, but as others have pointed out, it's not a feasable way.

If the purpose of this post was to "help with the US Mint coin situation", I would have posted this under the US Mint Coin thread.

The idea of using a handheld device to earn miles instead of lugging around bulky coins was just an aside.

I'm also willing to bet the merchant processing fees for this kind of application are pretty darn high unless it's a magnetic stripe or fancy contactless reader (not that this is used much in the US). After all, the chargeback rate must be significantly higher with this kind of app vs. a normal CC terminal (even a rented wireless one).

If someone said, "hey, let me type in YOUR CC in my iphone" to pay for this rusty lamp, I'd tell them to take their garage sale item and shove it.

-g

Well.. if you use a credit card with a fee that's lower than 1.7% (or however many pennies you value your miles at), then it's reasonable. You probably can't go any lower than 1.25% on fees, so you'd only earn under 0.5 pennies per dollar spent.

Still, if you can pay yourself enough money to make up for the fees (at least $3,000/month to cover $15 + some fraction of the fixed cost of the app ($50)), then it's free money.

So, on one side, you can keep carrying heavy coins, giving yourself back pains, and wasting time going to the bank and dealing with annoying managers/tellers. On the other side, you can sit on your ... and charge your credit card some money while watching tv. You can even set up automatic payments and have a constant influx of miles with not work at all. But you'll earn miles more slowly, in an arguably unethical way, and bear the risk of exploring new territory.

Who wants to try this out?

The App is available for $0.99 for a few weeks only as a special offer.

More FAQs here but it sounds like the %age per transaction is too much.

http://www.innerfence.com/apps/credi.../faq#qualified

Appears to be a front-end interface for an authorize.net merchant account. Presuming innerfence is the reseller.

As an iPhone user, this looks kinda cool. You can use the iPhone as a sig pad, and send pdf receipts. They say they're working on a credit-card reader, having one built like a dock would be way-cool.

Who cares if you're charging yourself? As long as you don't charge-back against yourself, how you move funds around shouldn't be an issue. I don't mind them setting fee structures for certain patterns, yet just saying "no" seems a bit odd (they'd probably point to risk analysis). Nothing two people (with trust) couldn't accomplish anyway. Appears you could have a 1/week pattern, between charge, transfer, and payment. Yet it is going to average around 1.7-1.8%, after it's all said and done.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Boy, you guys are negative!

I agree with the OP that this sounds like an interesting thing to think about.

The rest of you have made good points about why it's not a great deal, but still I'm glad the OP brought it to our attention.

Thanks, OP.

interesting.

i spent too little money normally. so, this could be very useful to get enough spent for signing bonus.
if i do 12 citi aa card a year, each with 750 spent, that is like 10000. it seems hopeless to me to spend so much on credit card. paying 3% (300）　ＩＳ　ＮＯＴ　ＭＵＣＨ　ＡＴ　ＡＬＬ．

$300 in credit fees, for 300,000 miles.

Am I missing something here?!