Earlier today, I had reported that Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock was stepping down.

He is, and the full letter he just released saying so is below.

Bostock did not say in the missive who will be Yahoo chairman in his place. Intuit CEO Brad Smith has a full-time job, and the newly installed Weather Channel CEO David Kenny does, too. Among the current directors, that would leave Sue James, Patti Hart and newly installed Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson — or one of Yahoo’s new board members.

In the letter, Bostock outlined the departures of four board members and the addition of five more directors (two of which were just named); did a little back-patting of his recent efforts to turn Yahoo around (after presiding over the board that got the Silicon Valley Internet giant into this mess); noted that the Asian talks to sell Yahoo’s stakes there are proceeding (it’s coming!); gave Thompson a thumbs-up (go, Scott!); and delivered kudos to Jerry Yang, the co-founder who left only weeks ago.

“Working with Jerry was always a delight,” wrote Bostock.

(Me, not so much, I would guess! Bygones?)

All kidding aside, Bostock has been the subject of a lot of criticism about Yahoo’s troubles, both deserved and undeserved, most especially for the non-sale to Microsoft several years ago. Many, including activist shareholder Daniel Loeb most recently, have called for his resignation.

It has not been an easy job, to be sure, so it must be a bit of a relief for the longtime advertising exec, who serves on other prominent boards, to finally pull away from the Yahoo black hole.

So, who’s next?

One interesting line in the letter, which everyone already knew, was that none of the various bids from outside investors have passed muster.

Wrote Bostock: “We have engaged with potential investors and reviewed proposals concerning an equity investment in the Company, although at this time there have not been any proposals which have been deemed by the Committee to be attractive to our shareholders.”

Here’s the Bostock letter:

Yahoo! Releases Chairman’s Update for Shareholders

SUNNYVALE, Calif., February 7, 2012 – Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, today released the following shareholder update from its Chairman Roy Bostock.
February 7, 2012

Dear Fellow Shareholders:

I write today to update you on the actions the Yahoo! board has taken, and the actions it is pursuing, to increase shareholder value and position the Company for growth. These actions result from a process I initiated about six months ago in a special meeting of the independent directors in which we analyzed the reasons why Yahoo! was not meeting either our own expectations or those of our shareholders.

The board decided then to move aggressively on three fronts to position Yahoo! for future success: one, we initiated a search for a new Chief Executive Officer with a vision and set of skills to lead Yahoo! into the future; two, we undertook a comprehensive strategic and structural review of the business; and three, we decided to assess the composition of the Company’s board of directors relative to its ability to enhance the prospects for Yahoo!’s future success. We have made progress on all three fronts.

First, and most importantly, we have appointed Scott Thompson as CEO to lead our company. Scott is a capable and dynamic leader who brings the experience and expertise the Company needs to achieve robust growth and success in the marketplace. Over the coming months and years, Scott will lead an outstanding team of Yahoos to deliver engaging user experiences driven by innovative products.

Second, we have made significant progress on the comprehensive strategic review which is overseen by the board’s Transactions and Strategic Planning Committee, chaired by director Brad Smith, the CEO of Intuit. The Committee’s guiding principle has been to assess alternatives which would increase value for all Yahoo! shareholders, and the Committee has been open to any transaction or initiative that would serve this objective.

As part of this review, we have pursued a wide range of discussions with potential partners. We have engaged with potential investors and reviewed proposals concerning an equity investment in the Company, although at this time there have not been any proposals which have been deemed by the Committee to be attractive to our shareholders. We are also in active discussions with our partners in Asia regarding the possibility of restructuring our holdings in Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan. The complexity and unique nature of these transactions is significant. While we continue to devote significant resources to these discussions, we are not in a position at this time to provide further detail or to provide assurance that any transaction will be achieved.

Finally, the board has concluded that in order to accelerate the Company’s transformation, the combination of a new Chief Executive Officer with an enhanced team of independent directors would provide Yahoo! with the expertise and perspectives necessary to drive innovation and growth going forward. Therefore, Mr. Joshi, Mr. Kern, Mr. Wilson and I have volunteered not to stand for re-election at the next shareholders’ meeting.

Furthermore, the board today elected two highly qualified independent directors, Alfred Amoroso and Maynard Webb, Jr. Mr. Amoroso served as President and CEO of Rovi Corporation until December 2011 and, among other positions, had previously served as the President, CEO and Vice Chairman of META Group, Inc., the President and CEO of CrossWorlds Software, Inc. and as a member of the world-wide management committee of IBM Corporation. Mr. Webb, the Chairman of LiveOps, Inc., served as that company’s CEO until July 2011. Prior to that, Mr. Webb was Chief Operating Officer of eBay and Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Gateway, Inc., in addition to management, leadership and board positions at several other companies spanning his 30-year career.

The board continues its search for additional independent directors. This search is being led by director Patti Hart, CEO of International Game Technology, Inc., who chairs our Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. We anticipate announcing additional directors to round out the board as soon as this process concludes.

Separately, as previously announced, Jerry Yang has resigned from the board of directors and other positions within the Company to pursue his many interests outside of Yahoo!. Working with Jerry was always a delight. He is a visionary and a pioneer who contributed enormously to Yahoo! since he co-founded the Company in 1995. He will be missed. The board thanks him deeply for his service and commitment to the Company.

Thus, following this year’s Annual Meeting a majority of Yahoo!’s directors will be new to the board this year, and all directors will have joined the board since 2010. We believe that this reconfigured board, with a fresh set of perspectives and diverse set of skills, will enable the Company to move forward even more aggressively.

It has always been a privilege for me to serve as Chairman of Yahoo!. The employees of Yahoo! remain the heart, soul, and future of the company. And with Scott Thompson leading them, they are the reason why I believe Yahoo! will create significant shareholder value over the coming years.

In September, this board moved proactively and decisively to improve the performance of the Company for the benefit of its shareholders. These actions could not have been accomplished without the support and active participation of each director on the board. For that, I thank them. And I thank them for the knowledge, expertise, talents and commitment they have brought to Yahoo!. We all take pride in the fact that we are positioning Yahoo! for success in the future. Yahoo! is an incredibly strong brand with formidable assets. I have every expectation that under Scott’s leadership, working together with the reconstituted board, the Company will thrive for many years to come.

Sincerely,
Roy Bostock
Chairman of the Board

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo will announce the impending departure of four of its longtime board members, including chairman Roy Bostock.

The others headed out the door are Hewlett-Packard exec Vyomesh Joshi, Gary Wilson and Arthur Kern.

I had reported in several previous posts that this exact group of directors was leaving, and noted in one yesterday that it was about to happen, and that new board members were also on the way.

And, presto, it is so!

(Update: Yahoo confirmed all in a letter it just released from Bostock, which I have posted separately.)

Yahoo’s two new directors are former Rovi CEO Fred Amoroso and LiveOps Chairman (and former CEO) Maynard Webb, who was once COO of eBay (pictured, left to right).

Rovi does digital entertainment technology, while LiveOps offers cloud-based enterprise solutions.

The Silicon Valley Internet giant will also be adding three more board members, said sources, but those people are not confirmed as yet.

And it is not clear who will be chairman of Yahoo’s board, either. Intuit CEO Brad Smith has a full-time job, and the newly installed Weather Channel CEO David Kenny does, too.

Sources said the news is coming after the markets close, with other updates, including: The news-free status of its ongoing strategery (the Asian deal is coming along — blah, blah, blah — but you read that here yesterday in much more detail); ladling praise on new CEO Scott Thompson (also formerly of eBay); and giving props to co-founder Jerry Yang, who stepped away from the board and from the company several weeks ago.

The moves by Yahoo are designed to thwart a possible proxy fight that might be coming from activist shareholder Daniel Loeb, who has been working on a board slate of his own.

It’s been hard for him, and also for Yahoo, to attract significant names to the board. The two new additions are solid tech execs, although certainly not high-profile appointments.

Yahoo declined to comment.

Here are their bios from the Rovi and LiveOps Web sites, if you want to know more:

Fred Amoroso is a member of Rovi Corporation’s Board of Directors.

Fred Amoroso is a member of Rovi Corporation’s Board of Directors. Fred Amoroso previously served as Rovi’s president and chief executive officer from July 2005 to December 2011. Prior to joining Rovi, Mr. Amoroso served as an advisor to Warburg Pincus, an investment firm from September 2004 to June 2005. From July 2002 to August 2004, Mr. Amoroso served as the president, chief executive officer and vice chairman of Meta Group, an information technology research and advisory firm. From October 1999 until its merger with IBM in January 2002, Mr. Amoroso served as president, chief executive officer and a director of CrossWorlds Software, Inc. Prior to CrossWorlds, Amoroso was a member of the world-wide management committee of IBM, was general manager of IBM Global Services Asia Pacific and held various other executive positions at IBM. Before joining IBM, Amoroso held various positions at Price Waterhouse, now PricewaterhouseCoopers, including lead technology partner.

Mr. Amoroso holds a B.S. in systems engineering and M.S. in operations research from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

As Chairman, Maynard brings almost 30 years of experience developing and leading high-growth companies to his role at LiveOps. From December 20, 2006 to July 18, 2011, Maynard was also LiveOps CEO. He joined LiveOps from eBay where he served as Chief Operating Officer. At eBay, Maynard directed engineering and technology operations, product development, customer support, trust and safety, global billing, human resources, and legal functions. Prior to eBay, Maynard was Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Gateway, Inc. He has also held management and leadership positions at Bay Networks, Quantum Corporation, Thomas-Conrad Corporation and IBM. A respected member of the Silicon Valley technology community, Maynard sits on the boards of several successful companies, including Salesforce.com, Admob and Baynote. Maynard holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Florida Atlantic University.

You recently reviewed an iPad app that lets you use Microsoft Office programs on an iPad. But does this support the “Track Changes” feature of Office, which I cannot find on any of the office-type apps I’ve tried on the iPad?

A:

Yes, it does. And tracked changes are synchronized with your PC or Mac.

As I noted in the review, the new app, called OnLive Desktop, gives you the complete Windows version of Office on an iPad, via the cloud. So all features in the Windows version, including the tracking of changes, are available.

Q:

I am a new Mac user and would like to become a Quicken user. I read your February 2010 critique of Mac Quicken. Is there a new and improved version of Mac Quicken?

A:

Intuit, the maker of the stripped-down Quicken Essentials for Mac I reviewed then, has improved the product. But more important, the company now says its last full version of Quicken for the Mac, called Quicken 2007, will soon be revised so that it runs with Lion, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system.

There was outrage from Mac Quicken users when Intuit earlier had declined to rewrite the full version to work with Lion.

Q:

Could you please tell me which smartphone today is a must if my last phone was the iPhone 4? Your review of the iPhone 4S indicated it wasn’t a “must” upgrade for iPhone 4 owners.

A:

Changing to a different phone would only be a “must” for you if you were unhappy with your iPhone, or wanted one of a couple of key features only available on competing phones.

One would be a larger screen. The iPhone screen is 3.5 inches, but some newer Android phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, now have giant screens as large as 4.65 inches. Personally, I find that too large for comfort, but you might not.

Another important feature is LTE wireless capability. A number of Android phones, such as the Motorola Droid RAZR, support LTE, a fourth-generation wireless technology that is much, much faster at data downloads than 3G, though it also tends to use up your battery faster. No iPhone yet supports LTE.

Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com

Yahoo shareholders felt a little giddier earlier this week, when it seemed as if the company had finally decided to make a deal with its Asian partners.

But the happiest crew might end up being the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s outside counsel, Skadden Arps — and especially Leif King, the fantastically named legal eagle who has been advising Yahoo on the deal.

That’s because today the Yahoo board approved continuing the negotiations to come to a final agreement over the stake, sources said, which should take six to eight weeks.

It’ll surely be happy holidays for billable hours!

As costly as the legal bills will be, if it all goes well, an Asian solution will mean one major problem solved, with a possible pile of cash and new assets coming in to Yahoo.

To get there, the company signed a term sheet earlier this week with Japan’s SoftBank to sell back all its holdings there, and with China’s Alibaba Group to sell off more than half its stake (moving from a 40 percent stake to a 15 percent one).

The deal values Yahoo’s total shares in both companies at about $17 billion.

While it gets a pretty accounting name — “cash-rich split “– the vehicle to unwind it all is essentially a complex tax dodge finally cooked up by the trio, in which cash, new assets and stock will be moved around until everyone gets what they want (except the U.S. government).

I would explain it — but I am on vacation, and would rather drink eggnog and sleep — so here is The Wall Street Journal’s version, which I like because it sounds like Alibaba and SoftBank are giving Yahoo a hugely loaded Starbucks card for Christmas:

“As envisioned in the scenario, Alibaba would create a subsidiary into which it would put several billion dollars of cash, plus an operating asset that Yahoo wants to buy using additional cash from Alibaba, almost like giving Yahoo a prepaid card for an asset of its choice, the people said.”

Everyone is hoping there will not be any hiccups in the deal, which has been spearheaded by Yahoo board member and Intuit CEO Brad Smith, and Jerry Yang, who is also the company’s co-founder and a major shareholder.

Alibaba CEO Jack Ma and CFO Joe Tsai, both co-founders of that company, were the point men for the Chinese company. And for SoftBank, it was its founder and CEO Masa Son and his main U.S. exec, Ron Fisher.

Now, said sources, Yahoo’s board is hoping to still keep the bids from a pair of private equity firms — Silver Lake and TPG Capital — alive.

While initially the focus on the action, the PE bidding for partial Yahoo stakes has recently been sidelined by the Asian deal.

Now, sources said, Yahoo is hoping the new infusion of cash and assets will allow it fend off shareholder unrest — stock buybacks and dividends, anyone — to solicit higher prices from the firms to make strategic investments.

Yahoo had considered the initial bids too low, as did some very pissed-off activist shareholders.

Still, it’s not clear if those firms will jack their offers now, although sources said Silver Lake is still interested in some sort of deal that would give it influence over remaking Yahoo.

Silver Lake and others think the long-troubled company could be revived with some effort, and become a much more lucrative Web property.

But those negotiations might run into roadblocks over who gets to pick leadership for the company. Yahoo has accelerated its efforts to hire a new CEO, after firing Carol Bartz in September.

The PE firms, who would buy a large stake in Yahoo, also have wanted some level of control, including CEO and board approval, in order to be able to make massive changes at the company to turn it around.

Wall Street seems to like the Asian part of the deal, at least, since it shows some sort of forward momentum at Yahoo, and from its often-lugubrious board.

Shares are up almost 7 percent in the last few days, although they are not popping as they might be, given that new valuations based on a successful Asian deal put the stock at a much higher price.

In other words, investors like what they see, but are watching and waiting for more.

“Let’s go. Yes, let’s go.” [They do not move.]

– Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot”

In Internet terms, the removal of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz happened a dog’s age ago.

In fact, it was September 6.

Since then, it has felt like a slow slog, especially contrasting the situation with that of another troubled Silicon Valley giant, Hewlett-Packard, which fired its CEO Léo Apotheker and appointed a new one, Meg Whitman on September 22.

Since then, in comparison, the former eBay CEO has been like the Energizer Bunny, making a series of major and often difficult decisions, including: Holding onto its PC unit; reaffirming its controversial deal to buy Autonomy; promising a decision on the fate of its webOS unit within the next two weeks; appointing new execs; and even buying a company.

To be fair, Yahoo did acquire advertising start-up Interclick.

Otherwise, still no sale or investment deal. No new CEO. No Asia resolution. And, perhaps most importantly, no clearly articulated strategy going forward.

It’s not that Yahoo’s leadership isn’t working at it.

Some fervently insist to me that there is a “plan,” as if there is some clever game of Internet Stratego going on that I cannot possibly grok.

Mebbe — but of this I have no doubt: The Yahoo board has indeed been huffing and puffing away, weighing and measuring, considering and debating.

A lot.

Maybe I’m just too impatient. I am (ask my kids).

Or maybe Yahoo’s beleaguered employees are, one of whom just wrote me plaintively, “unreal how they can drag this out,” in what has become a common refrain up and down the ranks.

Or maybe it’s the Asian partners, Alibaba Group and SoftBank, who are antsy and have considered a variety of nuclear options in order to get back stakes Yahoo holds in them. Said one: “The strategy seems to be to frustrate and exhaust us into submission.”

Or, finally, maybe it’s the newly frustrated recent bidders for a partial stake in Yahoo, Silver Lake and TPG Capital. Declared one to me after I warned that Yahoo might, in fact, drag the proceedings out longer than you might expect: “I thought you were kidding.”

Nope, welcome to the Yahoo waiting game, PE guys!

So, to help us all get through it, here’s a quick update primer on what’s what on the various fronts:

Who’s in Charge Here?

Technically, it is the Yahoo board, which is aided by interim CEO Tim Morse.

First, a word about Morse: By all accounts, he is doing a very good job as temporary head honcho — calming the troubled company, making swift decisions about daily operating issues and being a generally nice dude to deal with.

“He’s Yahoo’s no-drama Obama, in comparison to what was happening before,” said one exec, in reference to the more volatile regime under Bartz.

Still, despite his very pleasant all-hands meetings, such as one earlier this week, Morse had previously been Yahoo’s CFO and not an Internet-savvy visionary to give the company inspiration. No insult intended, but he’s the accountant guy.

To be fair, he is not meant to be the visionary, but many at the company are yearning for exactly that.

A role that is now being taken up again by co-founder, former CEO and director Jerry Yang, who dozens of employees tell me is unusually involved in operational details these days for a board member.

I get reports of sightings of him all the livelong day: Jerry in demand-side advertising confab! Jerry chitchatting with entrepreneurs from a possible start-up acquisition! Jerry weighing in on a variety of products. Look, over in the cubicle, it’s Jerry!

This is seen by Yahoo employees as a good thing and also a bad thing, since it’s hard to be running your little divisional show at Yahoo with the dude who invented it all looking over your shoulder, even if he means well. People naturally defer to Yang, the 800-pound Web icon in the room.

But, given the overwhelming state of stasis at Yahoo now — “No one can do anything until we find out how the story ends,” said one staffer — and employees eying the exits, no power at Yahoo really matters but the board.

You know, the board that has gotten the company to this moment of crisis and profound ennui, which is its own particularly ironic irony.

To better understand the power dynamics on the board, above is a little chart for you to peruse to give you an idea of which independent board member is running what key committee.

The only truly important one is the Transactions and Strategic Planning committee, which is headed by Intuit President and CEO Brad Smith and includes former Akamai President (and former Yahoo CEO candidate) David Kenny, top HP exec Vyomesh Joshi and other guy Gary Wilson.

And, in completely visible shadow form, Yang. Multiple sources close to the situation said he has been a key force in the strategery around a possible sale or investment.

This has caused not more than a little tension among board members, but everyone seems to like the much described nicest-man-in-the-room, Smith, and hopes his cool head will prevail.

Another important part of the board is the Nominating and Corporate Governance committee run by Patti Hart, who is energetically and simultaneously — if pointlessly — in search of a capable new Yahoo CEO.

Or, as I like to call this mythical person: The Unicorn.

The Deal

As I and many others have previously reported, there are bids on the table for partial investments in Yahoo by two very powerful private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital.

It’s a PE rumble, with a side of Microsoft financial backing! (I think Silver Lake’s Egon Durban makes a very nice Riff, while Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is the perfect Officer Krupke.)

My fervent wishes for some figurative and dance-accompanied knife-play aside, the bids are essentially the same in general and different in particular. Silver Lake is offering about $16.50 a share, while TPG is dangling a tiny bit more. Silver Lake has power entrepreneur and VC Marc Andreessen on its side, while TPG is trying to get Silicon Valley fave investor and start-up whisperer Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners and LinkedIn on its team. Both have ideas on CEOs, strategy and what to do about the Asian assets.

This type of deal could happen suddenly and you’ll hear about it quick, since the losing side will immediately trash it to the media.

As you might expect, each director has their favorite PE firm, with some not liking Andreessen, some thinking the TPG bid is a little light, some for a whole-company deal and some wanting Yahoo to hire its own CEO and run the place itself.

Of course, the last one shows a disturbing level of denial and should be a nonstarter, given the board’s abysmal record on CEO choice and its riding of Yahoo to this sad point in its storied history.

Here’s what to expect on the PE front: A lot of wrangling behind the scenes with frequent leaks to the media about what each side wants and will not yield on.

CEO choice or no CEO choice, that is the question!

Also a big factor are Yahoo’s major shareholders, few of whom like the partial investment deal, which is known as a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity), because of the insiderness of it all and because they prefer a whole-company sale at a higher price.

There is also pressure from activist shareholders like Daniel Loeb of Third Point, who has attacked Yang and others on the board and is ready to pounce with a proxy fight if Yahoo tries to override shareholders too egregiously. And, of course, the inevitable lawsuits over any arrangement that seems to block a whole-company bid.

That said, such a mega-deal seems unlikely, since it is too pricey and despite a lot of noise that Yahoo’s Asian partners were ready to strike with a takeover in order to get back Yahoo’s big stakes in their companies.

That’s kind of like buying a store to get back the cool pair of shoes you sold, but bankers love to scheme up this stuff. While it certainly could happen, it would be a bear of a deal.

Perhaps more like Yogi Bear, hopelessly angling for a tasty pic-a-nik basket — but grrrr anyway.

But perhaps the biggest factor in all of this mishegas is time. There is none on a lot of levels, most especially the increasing level of brain drain and drift at Yahoo. After the New Year dawns, this is going to spin right out of control and amount to the biggest internal challenge Yahoo faces.

An Asian Solution

As I and others have reported, Yahoo is entertaining yet another proposal to sell all or part of its Asian assets back to the companies, which make up a bulk of its market valuation.

The relationship between Yahoo and its Asian partners has long been fraught, and today the difficulty of reaching an agreement remains a vexing issue. That’s because it is hard and complex and because no one wants to do what the other side wants.

I am no tax attorney, but it seems as if Yahoo will ultimately come to some deal with China’s Alibaba and Japan’s SoftBank, which could include big investors like Russia’s DST Global.

And, as I reported last week, the Asian partners want to strike a deal with the current board rather than lose leverage with a much cannier new owner.

It’s a tough decision in all aspects to strike, but would remove the focus on the fact that Yahoo’s most valuable asset is something it is not running and simply holds due to a good stock trade in years past.

Years past should be the operative thought here, since the Asian assets have nothing to do with what Yahoo needs to do with its core U.S. and global brand.

You know, the thing that allowed them to buy those lucrative Asian assets in the first place?

Strategery

And that’s the crux of all this, isn’t it? Yahoo needs a new strategy and fast.

Or it needs to clarify and hone its current strategies around advertising and media and define itself once and for all. While it often touts itself as a premier digital media company, it’s still not clear exactly what Yahoo is saying by that.

In fact, incredibly, sources told me that the board was still wrangling over the tired issue of what Yahoo is at its most recent meeting — essentially, is it a products company or a media company?

If I had to listen to that who-am-I-anyway debate again, I think I would scream, given how many important Web trends that Yahoo has whiffed in recent years, many of which were right in its own wheelhouse.

How much damage this has caused to Yahoo’s core business is a critical one to determine, with many feeling the situation is too far gone to revive it and others confident that this is simply an issue of poor execution.

I am in the middle on this one, but all the indicators of Yahoo’s business have long been heading in the wrong direction, and results in the next quarter are expected to underline this even more.

Thus, the board’s navel-gazing at this point is untoward, considering that it is presiding over the possibility of a sale that should not have had to happen in the first place. While it is not quite a fire sale, it’s no cause for celebration at all the attention, either.

In fact, it’s also pointless, since — if this all resolves as it should — the current Yahoo board will not be the one determining the company’s future any longer. Remember that: This group should and will be gone for the most part.

Yahoo shareholders and employees can hope, at least.

Then, it will be up to the next group of leaders to make the very hard choices — including what are likely to be massive layoffs and radical surgery on its offerings — for what’s to come next.

In the end, that is all that will matter. Until then, as usual, you’ll have to sit tight.

But the company said that in an effort to woo new customers, it is adding a new feature to the 2012 TurboTax: some 700 live tax advisers who will answer customers’ questions by phone, for free.

Intuit didn’t provide a precise figure, but said it plans to spend millions of dollars to provide the tax-preparation assistance, which starts in December and runs through the end of April. It said it hopes the effort will keep its TurboTax business growing at its typical 10 percent-plus annual clip.

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For one, the company’s iPad software will now work with existing hardware, including cash drawers and receipt printers.

That means, for instance, when the merchant taps “tender,” the physical cash drawer will pop open so change can be given.

It will also improve the way it tracks sales history and provides transactions. But it stops short of integrating with outside software providers, like Intuit’s QuickBooks, which many small business owners already use to run their accounts.

Other improvements center on consumer loyalty. The latest update, called Square 2.2, will enable merchants to designate how many visits it takes to become a loyal customer. If it’s 10 visits a month, for instance, merchants can give customers a discount as soon as they walk through the door and use the accompanying Square Card Case on the iPhone or Android.

So far, the company’s meat and potatoes have been with small merchants that were not accepting credit cards before — and likely hadn’t already sunk thousands of dollars into registers and other hardware.

With enhancements like these, it’s conceivable that it will be able to move upstream to larger retailers, who won’t have to start running their businesses differently in order to use Square’s methods. But it may still have a way to go before it enters the mainstream.

Maybe get something cooking in the whole what-will-Yahoo-do stakes, now that one of Yahoo’s more active board members is back.

And by “back,” I mean that Kenny — no longer a candidate for CEO — has no further need to recuse himself from the strategic process in which the Silicon Valley Internet company finds itself.

In an interview with Advertising Age last week, Kenny — the well-regarded online ad exec who recently stepped down as president of network infrastructure giant Akamai — released an unusual statement:

As a matter of policy, I do not comment on matters related to Yahoo as a Yahoo director. However, as a personal matter, I want to clarify that I believe Yahoo is a great company with enormous potential, but I am not — and will not be — a candidate for the CEO position. I look forward to my continued service on the Yahoo Board of Directors.”

By removing himself from the fray, that means, according to several sources, that Kenny will be diving back into sleeve-rolling duties at Yahoo, as one of its — how can I put this? — less comatose board members.

In fact — until he was sidelined by the obvious conflict of interest inherent in wanting to be CEO, while also directing the fate of Yahoo for shareholder value — Kenny had been deeply involved in a lot of the changes that had taken place of late, after a long period of board inaction.

That included the ouster of CEO Carol Bartz, who was fired for a number of reasons, including lack of strategic vision. It was relatively new board member Kenny — he became a director in February — who led the strategy committee that had asked Bartz for her road map, which she did not deliver to their liking. Obviously.

Because of the swirl around his possible CEO candidacy — Kenny was a noticeable inside candidate, since he is well known in the Internet advertising world for running and then selling Digitas to the Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion in 2006 — he gave up leadership of the committee to Intuit President Brad Smith.

Sources said it is unlikely Kenny will get that top job back, but he remains a member of the transactions committee, which is leading the strategic review of the company.

That’s the key slot for the independent board members of Yahoo, who must ultimately be the ones to determine what path or offer the company will take.

One plus: Kenny has close relationships with most of the bidders — largely private equity firms — looking at Yahoo, and also is well known among the media and tech companies poking around, too. He also has advertising — and now tech — experience, which will be much needed as Yahoo explores its options.

Most importantly, Kenny is an independent director, which will be very important to the process going forward, especially since a lot of the spotlight has fallen on Yahoo co-founder and director Jerry Yang.

Yang — who has been a bit of a Yahoo lightning rod at times — has been involved in some of the meetings with those interested, along with interim CEO Tim Morse. The company recently noted that this was at the behest of the board.

While these were only informational meetings so far — and not negotiations, as some reports have surmised — Yang’s involvement will likely have to be more curtailed, at least publicly, especially if any of the deals include using his own large stake in Yahoo.

“This process has to be above board, since it is so easy for those wanting a better deal to try to cause all kinds of trouble,” said one source. “The company is already under attack in that regard.”

That’s a reference to a recent salvo by hedge fund activist Dan Loeb, a major Yahoo shareholder who has taken aim at the board and, last week, at Yang. Loeb essentially accused Yang of double-dealing in the process.

Enter Kenny, along with Smith and — to an increasingly lesser extent, of late — Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock. While there are other independent board members involved, these are the three to watch most closely now.

While some think Kenny still would like to be CEO of Yahoo — he was also on the short list several years ago when Bartz was hired — sources said he is more likely to take a job at another consumer Internet company.

While he certainly could slot into a large advertising firm or into the digital division of a big media concern, sources said Kenny is looking to be a CEO.

Just not at Yahoo.

At least for now, since down the road it is unclear what will become of Yahoo and who will run it in years to come.

In fact, it might even be Kenny in the end.

Personal Capital’s CEO, Bill Harris, who headed up Intuit and PayPal previously, is unveiling his latest company today, which melds technology with financial advisory services.

He says the goal is to bring the decades-old business of managing money to the masses, by replacing fancy offices and golf club memberships with software and video chatting.

“I think we are going to see a radical deconstruction of financial services over the next decade that may be similar to what’s happened to the media or GM,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they will go away, but they will look astonishingly different. That spells tremendous opportunity. It’s really difficult to take a large company with established ways of doing business and change.”

On the surface, it doesn’t look like Personal Capital would have a chance against Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Fidelity or Edward Jones.

It has zero clients, 40 employees, zero branches, $27 million in capital and obviously a long, long way to go. Harris admits: “I bet Wells Fargo or Schwab has 1,000 engineers for QA (quality assurance) alone,” but he counters, “We are better off than they are because we can move quickly.”

In a demonstration, Harris walked me through the site, where you can log in to all of your various bank accounts and brokerage accounts.

By doing so, Personal Capital will be able to see everything in one snapshot, so it can tell you that you are invested 79 percent in U.S. stocks, or if you have too much cash. You can even drill down to see how much money you spend at Amazon on a monthly basis, or on a category like groceries.

All of these tools are free, but users will have to pay for the advice — if they should want it.

Harris said the tools show you what you have, but the advice will tell you what to do if you are over-invested in U.S. stocks, or in a particular company.

“Most people have no idea and it’s the most important financial decision that you have to make,” he said.

The advisers will also help you eliminate fees that you are currently paying for mutual funds and come up with a long-term plan.

Personal Capital charges less than 1 percent of all the assets it is managing a year, which is below other brick-and-mortar businesses, he says. Additionally, the sales people don’t work on commission, so their interests are aligned with the client.

“I’m 55, and in some ways this is the culmination of my career,” Harris said. “I’ve done so much in financial technology over the past 20 years. … All of it has been pieces of the puzzle.”

Personal Capital is not the only one in Silicon Valley going after Wall Street.

Harris is also an adviser to Wikinvest and PageOnce.

PageOnce is building mobile applications to help people track their bills. Similar to Personal Invest, Wikinvest is building software to help users manage assets across multiple accounts. But instead of using advisers to make recommendations, it will eventually provide tips using algorithms to decide what is cheaper or more lucrative based on your holdings.

“I would argue that nowhere near enough is being done,” Harris said. “If you look at finance overall, it’s a huge and vital part of the American and global economy, and finance is one of the largest industries in the world. It’s up there with housing and autos and medicine. But when I think of all the industries where the Internet, or connectivity or mobile, has changed everything, it could be even more transformed.”

It’s easy to get Harris up on his soap box, but Michael Sha, the CEO of Wikinvest, will join him.

Sha says the irony in the industry is that the more you pay for financial services, the lower your return. Still, it’s not the aim of Wikinvest to replace the big brokerage houses. Its users will need them to make a trade.

Here’s a video of Harris, wearing a jacket and displaying the polish of Wall St.:

Bill Harris Overview from Personal Capital on Vimeo.

Nope, it’s not earbuds or a new iPhone case. It’s a credit card reader.

The wireless carrier has formed a strategic alliance with Intuit to start selling that company’s GoPayment credit card reader in its 2,300 retail stores and other distribution channels.

Mike Schaefer, Verizon’s executive director of product development, tells me that salespeople in Verizon retail outlets will be trained to teach owners of small-to-medium-sized businesses — or anyone else, for that matter — how to install the application, sign up, and start taking credit card payments.

Intuit’s GoPayment card reader plugs into the audio jack of most Android, BlackBerry and Apple smartphones and tablets.

And since it requires a smartphone, Schaefer says he believes it could drive more high-end phone sales among small-business owners.

Other devices on the market offer similar services, but Schaefer said Verizon picked Intuit’s card reader to exclusively feature in its stores. He declined to disclose the terms of the agreement. Other similar products are available from Square and VeriFone.

Many small-business owners are already acquainted with Intuit through its line of software products, including Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax.

Andrew Morbitzer, director of Intuit’s Payments Solutions Group, said this is the first time its card readers will be available at retail other than at the Apple store, which was negotiated by the company’s partner.

Verizon Wireless customers will be able to get the card reader for free after a $30 mail-in rebate. The application can be downloaded for free; Intuit charges 2.7 percent of each transaction. It also offers a monthly plan that costs $12.95, along with a lower 1.7 percent transaction fee. Verizon customers who opt for the monthly plan will not have to pay the fee for 60 days.

Intuit is currently also offering a free reader and two months free service on its Web site.

That’s the question I asked some digital money experts, whose job it is to push the creative boundaries on payments.

So, having captive reps from some of the key companies — BOKU, BilltoMobile, Intuit and Tapjoy — involved in leading the charge to do away with cash and plastic, I wanted to know what they carried around daily.

And — given I was moderating a panel for the MobileBeat 2011 conference, titled “The Likely Winners In Mobile Payments: Carriers, PayPal?” — it seemed like an appropriate query.

You’d think they would be on the cutting edge, right?

Wrong!

In fact, two of the panelists were still carrying around checks; one had dozens of credit and debit card options from banks around the world; and two were even carrying business cards from their previous employers, because they believed they could get discounts at rental car agencies.

Only one had a digital wallet.

That was Steve Klebe, VP Business Development & Strategy, BilltoMobile, who actually had an NFC-enabled sticker on the back of his phone, which was connected to his Discover account. But he’d only used it once.

It was also Klebe who carried around a blank check, in case of an emergency. Ron Hirson, BOKU’s SVP Product & Marketing, also had the kind of money that folded — a $50 American Express travelers check.

Remember those?

Omar Green, Intuit’s director of strategic mobile initiatives, had the biggest wallet — bursting — with a giant pile of cards stuffed in it. Deng-Kai Chen, director of product management at Tapjoy, easily won for carrying the lightest wallet — he claimed it was bad for your back if you sat on anything bigger in your pocket.

Everyone also had a variety of loyalty cards, photos, receipts and transportation passes.

What about me?

As the solitary female representative at the table I was the only one with coins, including about $2 in pennies (because I’m too lazy to ever spend them). I also probably had the most cash — around $28, mostly in $1 bills.

So how close are we to a mobile wallet revolution?

Judging by what was in our wallets, you might want to wait a while.

Photo Credit: allie.

I have just been notified that Quicken 2007 for the Mac won’t run on Apple’s new Lion operating system. I don’t wish to use the new Quicken Essentials for Mac program, which has fewer features. What are the alternatives?

A:

There are other full-featured finance programs for the Mac, whose makers say they will work with Lion and can import your data from Quicken. Two better-known ones are iBank and Moneydance. I haven’t reviewed either yet, so I can’t say how they measure up. Another option is to install Windows on your Mac, or buy a cheap Windows PC, and run Quicken for Windows. Intuit, the maker of Quicken, says on its support site that, while the Windows version can import most data from the Mac versions, it cannot import investment history. Intuit says: “You will need to either re-download your investment transactions or manually enter them.”

Q:

How do I put my computer to sleep?

A:

If it’s a Windows 7 PC, click on the “Start” button at the far left of the task bar. In the menu that pops up, click on the arrow icon to the right of the search box (it may be next to a button labeled “Shut Down.”) Select “Sleep” from the list that pops up.

If it’s a Mac, click on the Apple icon at the far left of the top menu bar and select “Sleep.”

Q:

How can I utilize my Slingbox for watching TV on an iPad?

A:

There’s an app for that, but it costs $30 and only works with two Slingbox models, the Slingbox SOLO and Slingbox PRO-HD. The company has a discounted upgrade program for people with older models. Information is at slingbox.com/go/iPad.

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

The person to be appointed to the job is Marie Tahir, who will be VP of design for Marketplaces, according to multiple sources.

Tahir will be part of the company’s global product management team and will report to Dane Glasgow.

She will assist with the monumental design challenge confronting the company as it tries to connect commerce across all the various platforms, such as mobile, local and social.

Tahir, pictured right, worked at Intuit, where she held two VP roles, one of which was focused on the development of consumer-facing products, such as TurboTax mobile, Web and desktop services. She also wrote the book “Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed” on the subject.

Her appointment coincides with an internal effort at eBay to beef up design and bring the user experience into the discussion earlier. The company uses the fancy name of “pre-viz,” which stands for previsualization, to talk about the role.

Some of the company’s artsy mojo can be seen externally at ebay.com/design/, where eBay’s designers show off the company’s culture.

Similarly, eBay-owned PayPal recently hired Sarah Brody, a seven-year veteran of Apple, to help with global design at the payments company.

The company, which for several years has been quietly building a new type of camera, revealed its technology this week. The Mountain View company is using an approach known as light-field imagery, which offers a number of advantages over traditional photography, most notably the ability to focus and refocus an image after it has been taken.

Guests at Lytro’s San Francisco art gallery launch event on Wednesday night had a chance to appear in their own light-field portraits, striking a pose alongside circus performers. The crowd featured many of those responsible for Lytro’s technology, including the Stanford professors that guided CEO Ren Ng’s early research, the company’s early funders and advisers, and the team that helped it pull off its splashy launch, which had Lytro featured all day Wednesday as the top tech story on Google News.

At the event, I had a chance to catch up with Ng, as well as some of the company’s early investors, including Andreessen Horowitz partner Ben Horowitz, Intuit founder Scott Cook and former Greylock partner Charles Chi, who is now the company’s full-time executive chairman.

Speaking to the crowd, Chi recalled his seemingly crazy decision, several years ago, to invest in a company with an academic at the helm and a bizarre business model. The positive response the company got to its launch, Chi said, showed that maybe it wasn’t that crazy after all.

“I wasn’t totally delirious all those years ago making that first investment,” Chi said.

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• All Lytro coverage

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110623/its-goal-in-focus-camera-start-up-lytro-takes-a-moment-to-celebrate-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110406/worries-about-phishing-attacks-rise-as-epsilon-data-breach-mess-goes-on/ http://allthingsd.com/20110406/worries-about-phishing-attacks-rise-as-epsilon-data-breach-mess-goes-on/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:01:16 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=4804 The collateral damage from the data breach of the email marketing firm Epsilon continues to spread.

I’ve just heard from someone who says they’ve received an email from Crucial.com, the Web retailer of computer memory owned by the chipmaker Micron, that data on its users was compromised. I’ve also heard form customers of Fred Meyer, Fry’s, Brookstone, 1-800-Flowers and the recruiting firm Robert Half International saying they’ve received similar emails.

However, now we’re getting into phase two of this mess. Whoever the original attackers are, they may be starting to carry out phishing attacks against the people whose information was taken from Epsilon. There’s been at least one report out of North Carolina of emails going to customers of a Chase Bank that aren’t really from that bank. Given that phishing attacks are a daily occurrence, however, it’s hard to specifically pin down this one as being related to the Epsilon breach. But the fact that it’s being mentioned at all indicates how much anxiety about phishing attacks has escalated in the days since the breach was disclosed.

It being the height of tax season, Intuit, maker of Turbotax, the most popular tax preparation software on the market, published a security alert to its customers today. Though it’s not an Epsilon customer, it said that–given that so many banks are among those affected–it thought it should offer some tips on how to detect a phishing attack and what to do and not do. Its advice bears repeating: When in doubt, don’t click on links in an email sent by a bank, retailer or other institution.

Meanwhile, shares in Epsilon’s parent company, Allied Data Systems, don’t seem to be feeling any further ill effects from all the negative attention. Its shares finished the day up 38 cents to close at $84.12, and the stock is up about 16 percent since the start of the year. The company was in damage control mode today, saying that it was working with federal authorities and outside computer forensics experts to investigate how the breach happened and who did it and to ensure that additional security measures are put in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

And even though Epsilon represented about 22 percent of Allied Data’s revenues last year, the company said that it expects the incident to have “minimal if any impact” on its overall financial performance for the foreseeable future, and that the breach affects only about two percent of Epsilon’s total client base. That may not sound like a large number, but when you consider that Epsilon has about 2,500 clients, and that two percent of that is 50 companies, most of them large, household name companies, it’s hard to minimize the number of people potentially affected. Allied Data’s biggest concern now, it says, is to regain the trust of its clients–that is, the companies on whose behalf it sends marketing email messages.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110406/worries-about-phishing-attacks-rise-as-epsilon-data-breach-mess-goes-on/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110331/intuit-salesforce-com-team-up-to-target-small-businesses/ http://allthingsd.com/20110331/intuit-salesforce-com-team-up-to-target-small-businesses/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:01:10 +0000 Cari Tuna http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=38396 Intuit and Salesforce.com are teaming up to take more small businesses to the cloud.

The two companies on Friday are set to announce a partnership that marries Intuit’s accounting software for small businesses with Salesforce.com’s sales-automation offerings–-all handled over the Web, or in the cloud, as many industry executives put it these days.

They plan to offer a Web-based application based on Salesforce.com technology that will be sold through Intuit’s App Center for users of QuickBooks, a program used to manage the finances of 4.5 million small businesses, Intuit said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110331/intuit-salesforce-com-team-up-to-target-small-businesses/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110308/its-that-time-of-the-year-more-tax-apps-hit-the-market/ http://allthingsd.com/20110308/its-that-time-of-the-year-more-tax-apps-hit-the-market/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:00:16 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=4797 Intuit, which already has an iPhone app for filing the simplest of tax returns, this week introduced an iPad version of TurboTax capable of handling more complex returns.

“TurboTax is the first and only app that lets taxpayers prepare and e-file their federal and state tax returns using only an iPad,” Intuit said in a blog post. “So now you can tap, tap, tap your way to a refund.”

No word on what happens if you swipe.

TurboTax for iPad hopes to follow in the footsteps of Intuit’s SnapTax for iPhone which had more than 350,000 downloads in its first two weeks on the market.

Separately, H&R Block announced a deal with online finance service Pageonce on Monday that will allow its do-it-yourself tax filers to check the status of their refunds from within the Pageonce mobile app. The company noted that the IRS offers similar data on its Web site, but said that site is updated less frequently and that it takes at least 72 hours before that info shows up on the government site. Intuit also has a refund-tracking app called MyTaxRefund.

The IRS even has an app of its own. IRS2Go, for both Android and iPhone, lets users track refund status and get other information straight from Uncle Sam.

Despite the proliferation of tax apps, the Mobilized household is headed to a real-life accountant this week to prepare our taxes. But if we get a refund, we just might spend it on an iPad 2.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110308/its-that-time-of-the-year-more-tax-apps-hit-the-market/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110303/square-now-processing-1-million-a-day-in-mobile-payments/ http://allthingsd.com/20110303/square-now-processing-1-million-a-day-in-mobile-payments/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:36:38 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=3264 Square is now processing $1 million a day in credit card transactions over mobile phones.

Back in February, the San Francisco company, which was started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, said it was signing up 50,000 to 60,000 new users a a month and processing millions of dollars a week.

Earlier last week, Square dropped the rates it charges plumbers, artists and housecleaners to use its services, in order to ramp usage on its network.

It seems to have worked.

Late last night, Dorsey tweeted that “As of today @Square is processing more than $1,000,000 a day. Think of all the individuals & businesses behind that number. Congrats to all!”

Square’s rates are now a flat fee of 2.75 percent per transaction, instead of the previous fees, which charged 2.75 percent plus an additional 15 cents. (The rate for when a credit card number is keyed in, rather than swiped, will remain the same at 3.5 percent plus 15 cents.)

The company’s biggest competitor is Intuit’s GoPayment, which has yet to match the drop. UPDATE: Intuit said that its GoPayment customers are processing $9 million a week using GoPayment and its online and QuickBooks payment services.

Separately, Dorsey was featured today in the April issue of Vanity Fair, which labeled the media-shy man as one of the visionaries of the Digital Age.

The profile traces Dorsey’s time at Twitter as the former CEO and the circumstances of his departure, along with his new ambitions for changing the way we pay for things and the way merchants charge for them.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110303/square-now-processing-1-million-a-day-in-mobile-payments/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110303/teradata-acquires-aster-data-for-263-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20110303/teradata-acquires-aster-data-for-263-million/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:53:38 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=3705 Data storage concern Teradata said today it would spend $263 million to buy the majority of equity in privately held Aster Data Systems that it doesn’t already own. Aster specializes in analytics and management of unstructured data. Teradata says the combination will give it a leg up on the world of big data, which it defines as the massive mixed trove of data that’s both structured and unstructured, where complex interrelationships aren’t easily determined from conventional analysis. Teradata already owned 11 percent of Aster, whose customers include Barnes and Noble, comScore, LinkedIn and Intuit.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110303/teradata-acquires-aster-data-for-263-million/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110222/square-sacrifices-revenues-to-ramp-mobile-payment-volumes/ http://allthingsd.com/20110222/square-sacrifices-revenues-to-ramp-mobile-payment-volumes/#comments Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:30:42 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=3039 Square is dropping the rates merchants pay when accepting credit card payments using a mobile phone.

The move is significant because it puts Square’s new rates below the industry standard for small merchants, who typically do less than $1,000 a month in business.

Square is taking the high-risk bet that cutting the rate will fuel its gain in market share as the race heats up in the mobile payments space.

“In the short-term, we will sacrifice revenue, but we believe it is worth the cost because it is the right decision for users and by simplifying payments it will help grow the entire market,” a spokeswoman explained.

Square’s rates will fall to a flat fee of 2.75 percent per transaction instead of charging 2.75 percent plus an additional 15 cents. (The rate for when a credit card number is keyed in, rather than swiped, will remain the same at 3.5 percent plus 15 cents.)

Square’s new rates will resonate well with merchants.

It means that for a $100 purchase, they will now pay $2.75, rather than $2.90. The impact will be much greater for smaller purchases, like a $3 cup of coffee that will now cost the merchant 8 cents, down from previous 23 cents.

There’s also a benefit when a customer visits a coffee shop twice in one day, for example.

Under the old rates, the merchant would have to pay 30 cents for a customer who visits twice a day in transaction fees alone. But under the new rates that goes away and the merchant will only be charged a percentage of both transactions.

Square, which recently raised $27.5 million in venture capital, is trying to gain a foothold in a market that remains inaccessible to many small vendors, who aren’t willing to spend thousands on a point of sales machine.

Instead, it offers merchants the option of plugging a small dongle into a smartphone, such as an iPhone, iPad or Android device to accept payments.

In the mobile payments space, Square competes directly with services being built by mammoth financial incumbents, as well as others like Intuit, PayPal and the wireless carriers.

Intuit, which also provides an accessory for smartphones to take payments, charges 2.7 percent plus 15 cents with no monthly service plan. A high-volume account, which charges more than $1,000, costs $12.95 a month, but drops the rate to 1.7 percent plus 30 cents.

Will Intuit drop its prices to compete with Square?

Possibly. After Square made its card readers free, Intuit followed suit, and said last week that after a short trial period, it was committed to keeping them free permanently.

To be sure, the fees can be baffling to a small business owner.

In a survey, conducted by the Merchant Bill of Rights, it found that only 26 percent of participants believe they are being treated fairly by the debit/credit/prepaid card processing industry, and only 21 percent understand the rates, fees and surcharges they pay.

Still, Square will clearly be taking a financial hit.

It will have to continue to pay the fees being demanded by credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard. But the company said it continues to negotiate these rates with providers.

There is some hope a compromise can be reached.

Recently, Visa wrote about Square in a blog post, referencing a recent interview we did with Square’s CEO Jack Dorsey, who is also the co-founder of Twitter. In the post, Visa said Square provides an easy payment solution for small merchants. It wrote: “We are committed to working with innovative companies, like Square and others, as the world shifts to electronic payments.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110222/square-sacrifices-revenues-to-ramp-mobile-payment-volumes/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110208/intuit-aims-to-expand-quickly-onto-tablets-phones/ http://allthingsd.com/20110208/intuit-aims-to-expand-quickly-onto-tablets-phones/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:40:13 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3634 Intuit is hoping its iPhone tax-filing app is just the beginning of what will be a large and rapid expansion into the world of phones and tablets.

That program, dubbed SnapTax, is off to a quick start, having notched 350,000 downloads in less than a month.

However, CEO Brad Smith said he knows that Intuit has a huge opportunity–and challenge–in the shift from a desktop-centered world to one ruled by mobile devices.

Over the last year and a half, the company has gone from essentially no mobile presence to one with more than a dozen initiatives, including a number of iPhone and Android apps as well as an SMS-based service in India that provides small-business owners ways to easily connect with their customers via mobile phone. Intuit’s SMS products in India also allow farmers to compare the prices nearby markets are offering for their crops, a feature that the company says has enabled small farmers to get, on average, 20 percent higher prices.

On Tuesday, the company is announcing its latest move–an expansion of its Mint.com iPhone app to allow for accounts to be created and fully updated from the phone (see screenshot).

It’s part of what CEO Brad Smith said is a recognition that the company not only needs to create mobile counterparts to its desktop and Web products, but in many cases also needs to offer the younger generation a mobile-only option. On Mint, for example, half of all interactions are already happening on the phone, as opposed to via the Web.

“We never would have guessed,” Smith said. However, the company has been spending a lot of time both interviewing consumers in Mountain View and meeting them on the go at places like Starbucks. Those meetings and other conversations have led Smith to shift the company’s focus. Initially, he was focused on a world where customers needed to enter their information only once. Now he is focused on creating apps that, in some cases, means a user will never type in information. SnapTax, for example, uses a smartphone’s camera to digitize tax forms and then uses character recognition to enter the text, with a customer having only to make sure the information is accurate and then answer a few questions.

“That mobile-only world is out there,” Smith said. “We’ll have to think differently.”

The opportunity is also a challenge. After forcing out competitors like Microsoft on the desktop and then acquiring Mint.com–a top Web-based finance rival–the company now sees challenges from smaller, mobile-only rivals like Square. The key, Intuit said, is the fact that it isn’t relying on the phone to do the heavy lifting. Instead, it’s using the iPhone and other devices to tie into its vast existing Web services. That, say Smith and others, gives the company a scale that its competitors can’t match. Intuit’s QuickBooks, for example, already handles one in 12 U.S. payroll accounts.

Intuit also offers services to community banks and credit unions, which in turn enable their customers to access their accounts over any phone or carrier.

Still, Smith said the company knows it needs to gain new skills and gain them rapidly. The result is that nearly every team is working on something mobile, with many of them comparing notes on what is clicking with early users. In addition to full products like SnapTax, the company also has a number of public apps on a labs site that handle everything from tracking mileage and timesheets, to Lasso–a tool for businesses to create mobile deals and promote them using Facebook.

On the horizon is a feature that will allow small businesses using its GoPayment service to process checks by taking a picture of them with a phone–much like USAA and Chase customers are able to do with their personal accounts. In response to Square, Intuit has also been giving out free credit card readers and offering a service with no up-front or monthly fees, albeit with a slightly higher transaction charge than its service for larger-volume customers. That offer is scheduled to end this month, but is likely to be extended.

The company is also trying to make sense of the opportunity created by tablets like the iPad and devices based on Android. Last week, for example, it showed how GoPayment running on the Honeycomb version of Android can take advantage of the larger-screen real estate to allow users to do more than just process payments on mobile, turning the tablet into something akin to a visual cash register.

Intuit’s employees also have been doing a lot of mobile stuff in their spare time. Intuit, much like Google, allows workers to spend a fraction of their time on pet projects. Some are potential new businesses, while a bunch are internal tools, including one notable app that calculates the cost of a meeting by adding up the salaries of all the people scheduled to attend.

But despite its progress, Smith and team aren’t satisfied.

“We’ve scratched the surface,” says CTO Tayloe Stansbury. “We’ve got a long journey in front of us.”

Indeed. Smith said that if he were grading the company on the progress it has made based on where it started, he said it might merit a 7 on a scale of one to 10. But that, he said, is not the scale he is using.

“If I score us where we need to be, I’d give us a three,” he said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110208/intuit-aims-to-expand-quickly-onto-tablets-phones/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110207/squares-jack-dorsey-wants-to-replace-everything-from-the-receipt-to-the-register/ http://allthingsd.com/20110207/squares-jack-dorsey-wants-to-replace-everything-from-the-receipt-to-the-register/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:46:46 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2412 From the San Francisco Chronicle offices where some of the newspaper’s local ad sales used to be, we caught up with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, which is working on ways to accept credit card payments using a mobile phone.

Within a few minutes, I’d paid Square’s COO Keith Rabois $2 after he swiped my credit card through a small plastic dongle attached to his iPhone. I signed the screen with the tip of my finger and received a receipt by email to confirm the purchase.

(They did not repeat this transaction more than 10 million times to recently raise $27.5 million, they promised).

For small-business owners, like an artist at a farmer’s market or even a family at a Saturday morning yard sale, this could make the difference in closing a sale, especially as our society moves away from cash and more to plastic.

Rabois says 50,000 to 60,000 new users are signing up a month, and Square is processing millions of dollars a week.

It is also convenience–at a price.

Square charges 2.75 percent plus 15 cents for swiped transactions, and slightly more if you type in a credit card number. For $100, that translates to a $2.90 service charge.

The model doesn’t replace the need for Visa and MasterCard, but does compete head-on with services being built by those financial incumbents, as well as others like Intuit, PayPal and the wireless carriers.

On the merchant side, it’s easy, too. Download the app to either an iPhone, iPad or Android device, create an account and receive a Square accessory in the mail. On the user side, your card will be swiped by a small proprietary reader, and you will be emailed a receipt.

Dorsey, who slowed down long enough to talk to us for a few minutes, is the visionary behind the operation, which sees way more applications for what it is building–from redefining the receipt to getting rid of the register.

EMoney: Last month, Square raised $27.5 million in fresh capital. What’s the plan for 2011?

Dorsey: The plan includes growing the team, both in engineering and design, and increasing the awareness of Square, which means expanding the user base to the plumber, the piano teacher and the dog walker. As for product innovation, we will do a lot with the receipt. “Let’s make it interactive instead of something we throw away.”

How can the receipt experience improve?

Dorsey: Making payments “has never been treated as a product. It’s a burden, and yet it’s such a common human activity.” At the heart of it, the receipt process is a publishing platform, he said. “We can dramatically improve what you take away.” Currently, a Square receipt includes a picture of the merchant, a description of what you purchased, the amount and a map of where you bought it. When buying a cup of coffee, why not include information about the coffee beans, and link to an article in Wikipedia? A more advanced version would eliminate the need to carry around 20 coffee cards and be intelligent enough to give you a 10th cup free.

Do you think you can replace the register?

Dorsey: “Yes. They are terrible.”

How?

Dorsey: “It’s a pain, and it takes forever.” Long lines are created in cafés, and waiters must come back with the check. “We aren’t just accepting credit cards–we are simplifying the friction from the payment system. No one has done this.” Square is looking at making an all-in-one payment and point-of-sale device that could be as simple as an iPad. And, with one swipe of the card, a patron could broadcast his or her location on Twitter and receive loyalty points.

What about innovation on the merchant side?

Dorsey: “There’s a lot of attention on the payers, but not the merchants….Every Silicon Valley company has a dashboard–it’s called Google Analytics–but a lot of small- to medium-size businesses have no access to data at all.” A point-of-sale system could cost $15,000, and still it would not track how many lattes were sold vs. blueberry muffins. But what if a system could be built that could track this and show whether to draw correlations between the two? “Data simplifies everything,” he said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110207/squares-jack-dorsey-wants-to-replace-everything-from-the-receipt-to-the-register/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110204/exclusive-intuit-sees-more-than-350000-downloads-for-snaptax-its-smartphone-tax-filing-app/ http://allthingsd.com/20110204/exclusive-intuit-sees-more-than-350000-downloads-for-snaptax-its-smartphone-tax-filing-app/#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:00:52 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3513 Forget e-filing. It seems lots of people this year are deciding to iFile their return.

Intuit executives tell Mobilized that the company has seen 350,000 downloads for its SnapTax app in less than three weeks since the app was made available. SnapTax allows users that qualify for the simplest of tax returns to complete and electronically file their documents all from within a single app on their Android phone or iPhone.

The program uses the smartphone’s camera to take a picture of a person’s W-2 form and then pops the scanned information into the app, asks a series of about 10 questions and, voila, the return is ready for Uncle Sam.

Carol Howe, the product manager for SnapTax, said that the tax app was a good fit with highly mobile users, who tend to be younger and less likely have a complicated return.

“They don’t [own] a home, they don’t have dependents,” she said. “They just basically have a job.”

Users don’t pay anything to download the app, but do have to fork over $14.99 if they decide to go ahead and file from their phone. On the iPhone, it’s handled as an in-app purchase. On Android, users are prompted to upgrade to the paid version just as they go to file their return. The team said it was excited to hear about Google’s plans for in-app payments and looks forward to switching over to that, more straightforward, option once it is available.

So far, Intuit says it has seen 2.5 times as many downloads for the iPhone as for the Android version.

“It is a little bit of a surprise,” Howe said, though she noted the app has gotten strong promotion in Apple’s App Store.

To be honest, some of the folks on the team were surprised consumers were willing to file taxes on their phone at all. However, after Intuit began studying the issue two years ago it found that a number of consumers, particularly young people, had no problems putting their social security number and other information into their phones.

“Having their taxes on the phone isn’t any worse than all the private information that’s already on the phone,” said lead designer Alan Tifford, noting that the app tends to be popular among the same set that has their whole life stored in Gmail. What the team did do was add new layers of security, encrypting the tax data as it is being sent to and from Intuit’s servers and also requiring users protect the app’s data with a password, whether or not they use a password to secure their device as a whole.

Intuit tested out the idea of a phone app last year in California and has spent the last six months finalizing its plans for SnapTax and making sure it is ready for prime time. Howe (pictured above with Tifford and engineering manager Amir Eftekhari) said that while the downloads are a promising start, it’s too soon to gauge how many people will actually file their returns via the app. Howe said that Intuit will wait until all the filings take place in April to decide where to go next with the tax-preparation app.

SnapTax is just one of several mobile initiatives at Intuit. I spent several hours with CEO Brad Smith and other top executives at the company’s Mountain View, Calif., offices on Thursday and will have a follow-up post on the broader mobile strategy next week.

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