So It’s 2009, and Mobile Payments Aren’t Really Mobile
In 2009, accepting credit cards meant being tethered to a cash register. If you were a plumber finishing a job, a caterer at an event, or a consultant meeting a client at a coffee shop, you had two options: cash only, or miss the sale.
Square launched that same year with their iconic white dongle. Revolutionary - if you owned an iPhone. Everyone else? Out of luck.
That “everyone else” was 94% of the mobile phone market. Ninety-four percent. Square built for 6% of the world and called it revolutionary.
I Looked at the Numbers Differently
Square and its competitors built for smartphones. Smartphones with data plans. Smartphones with app stores. Smartphones that, in 2009, basically meant one thing: the iPhone.
But 75% of mobile phone users had Bluetooth. That was 219 million devices that could already connect wirelessly - they just needed something to connect to.
So I built it.
A Keychain-Sized Credit Card Reader
PayThatWay was a credit card reader the size of a keychain. Press a button. Swipe a card. The device connects to your phone via Bluetooth, automatically dials our processing center, and completes the transaction - all through a voice call.
No smartphone required. No data plan. No app to download. Just your existing phone and thirty seconds of one-time setup.
The plumber in rural Montana with a flip phone? He could accept credit cards. The Mary Kay rep whose only phone was three years old? She could take payments on the spot. Anyone with a Bluetooth phone became a mobile merchant.
That felt like something worth building.
We Out-Secured Square
Mobile payments had a reputation problem in 2009. Consumers worried about data theft. Banks worried about fraud. Regulators worried about compliance.
PayThatWay addressed all of it with hardware-based security that would later become industry standard. Card data was encrypted the moment it entered the device - point-to-point encryption, before “P2PE” was even an acronym. No sensitive information ever existed unprotected on the phone. The transaction qualified as “card-present,” which meant lower fees for merchants and stronger fraud protection for everyone.
The processing facilities had biometric access controls, round-the-clock security staff, and infrastructure that met bank-level compliance standards. We weren’t just competing with Square - we were out-securing them. And honestly, that mattered to me. If you’re handling people’s money, security isn’t optional.
Made in Idaho (Yes, Really)
Every PayThatWay token was manufactured in the Treasure Valley, near Boise. Not because it was cheaper - it definitely wasn’t - but because quality control matters when you’re handling people’s money.
The engineering went deep: injection molding studies for the enclosure, PCB layouts optimized for drop resistance, battery configurations tested for the heat and cold of a contractor’s truck in summer and winter. (You’d be surprised how many hardware products fail because someone didn’t think about thermal tolerance.)
Hardware is unforgiving. You get one chance to get it right. There’s no “push a fix to production” when the device is already in someone’s pocket.
The Patent
USPTO Patent Application #20110215141, filed December 2010, published September 2011. The core innovation: universal mobile payment methodology that worked with any Bluetooth device.
By the time the patent published, mobile payments had become a gold rush. Everyone was racing to build the next Square. Most of them made the same mistake Square did - building for the future smartphone market instead of the phones people actually owned right now.
These Ideas Didn’t Die
The ideas in PayThatWay didn’t disappear when the project ended. They became the foundation of modern mobile payments:
Hardware-based encryption. Card-present qualification for mobile transactions. Security architectures that protect data from the moment of swipe. When you tap your phone at a payment terminal today, you’re using concepts we patented in 2010.
We didn’t win the market. But here’s the thing - the first mover doesn’t always win. Sometimes you just map the territory for everyone who comes after.
What This Taught Me
Hardware is hard. Every decision is permanent - you can’t push a fix to a device that’s already shipped. The timelines are longer, the costs are higher, and the margin for error is basically zero.
But hardware also teaches you rigor that software rarely demands. When you’ve designed injection molds and calculated thermal tolerances, software architecture starts to feel almost forgiving by comparison.
PayThatWay was ahead of its time. The market wasn’t ready for universal mobile payments - until suddenly everyone was. That’s the risk of innovation: being right too early looks exactly like being wrong.
Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.
See the original demo video to watch the system in action.
