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Forget ka-ching. It's all tap-tap these days. Restaurants and shop owners tired of cash registers and expensive credit card terminals are switching to cheaper devices that plug into smartphones and tablets. And companies such as PayPal, Square Inc., and Groupon Inc. are rushing to meet them, developing sleeker stands to mount tablets running their software or hooking up with existing systems.

Matt Schodorf, owner of Schodorf's Luncheonette, swipes a credit card on the Square Stand at his restaurant, in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles on June 5, 2013. The Square Stand rings customers up on Squares applications. Merchants fed up with the clunky system they have for processing credit and debit card payments are moving increasingly to credit card swiping machines that plug into mobile pads. (Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
Matt Schodorf, owner of Schodorf's Luncheonette, swipes a credit card on the Square Stand at his restaurant, in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles on June 5, 2013. The Square Stand rings customers up on Squares applications. Merchants fed up with the clunky system they have for processing credit and debit card payments are moving increasingly to credit card swiping machines that plug into mobile pads. (Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times/MCT)Read moreMCT
    by By Adolfo Flores, LOS ANGELES TIMES, McClatchy-Tribune
    Published 

Forget ka-ching. It's all tap-tap these days.

Restaurants and shop owners tired of cash registers and expensive credit card terminals are switching to cheaper devices that plug into smartphones and tablets. And companies such as PayPal, Square Inc., and Groupon Inc. are rushing to meet them, developing sleeker stands to mount tablets running their software or hooking up with existing systems.

The shift is happening as mobile devices permeate many facets of consumers' lives, including the way they shop and pay for everyday items.

There are players of all sizes in the burgeoning mobile payment systems industry, including big financial institutions such as Bank of America and small start-ups such as Square in San Francisco. It has become a crowded field, and some of the bigger players are expanding their products to set themselves apart.

The standard bearer has been Square, among the first companies to enable credit card payments to be accepted on mobile phones through its Square Reader and app in 2010. It has since seen a big boom in the number of businesses and people using their app, and it is now processing more than $15 billion in payments annually.

The company said it plans next month to release what it calls Square Stand, which incorporates a built-in card reader that attaches to an iPad and a USB hub that connects to accessories such as a cash drawer, receipt printer, and scanner.

For the cost of an iPad and $299 for the Square Stand, the company says small retailers can get a cash register that organizes their inventory and provides instant sales analysis.

That's significantly lower than similar systems running on standard cash registers that can be cumbersome and cost thousands of dollars.

"We're seeing larger brick-and-mortar merchants increasingly tearing out their old point-of-sale systems to run their businesses with Square," said Faryl Ury, Square spokeswoman. "We built the Square Stand for these businesses."

She said use of Square continues to grow on smartphones, but it's growing at a faster rate on iPads. IPad customers now account for nearly 50 percent of total payments processed by Square, and the average payment volume processed by iPad customers is more than double that of customers using smartphones.

Analysts expect a dogfight as PayPal takes on Square, launching in the next few weeks an incentive program aimed at persuading businesses to dump their tills.