• Fortune, Monday, January 10, 2011 2:28 PM

Financial services provider Intuit is making a mobile payments play this week with the launch of a free version of its nearly two-year-old GoPayment service. "GoPayment, designed for small businesses that don't yet accept credit cards -- think babysitters, plumbers, dogwalkers and flea market vendors -- aims to compete with Square, a mobile payments company launched in 2009 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey," Fortune reports.

What's more, Intuit plans to promote the new service through television ads and YouTube videos starting this week. "This will attract the smaller businesses that couldn't take credit card payments before or are taking them but not getting enough value," Chris Hylen, general manager of Intuit's payment solutions division, tells Fortune. "It's for people who are on the fence because they don't want to pay a monthly minimum." Intuit is best known for its Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax accounting software. Just like Dorsey's Square service, Intuit's GoPayment is a mobile app coupled with a magnetic stripe reader that attaches to smartphones.

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