Headphone Phone Jack Credit Card Swipe with Browser App

Question

We want to accept credit card swipes via iPhone and Android phones but cannot find any devices that connect via the headphone jack that will populate a field in the phone's browser. This is very easy to do with USB devices connected to a PC.

There are several existing phone jack devices with proprietary API's but from what I can tell these require native applications. It makes sense for this to be standardized or for there to be an open source API but maybe the market isn't there yet.

Does anyone know of a way to get a headphone jack credit card swiper to populate a field in the phone's browser?

EDIT: This doesn't seem possible. For some reason no one has a problem with using HID standard USB readers for PC's / Macs, but this is not ok for phones and tablets. So the best option appears to be to to use PhoneGap to connect to a low cost reader.

But here's the problem: Readers choices appear to be $50-100 devices or $5 devices from China that we can't get to work reliably. I'm looking for a reliable device in the $15-20 range and will be posting my research as tenable answers.

Answer 1

Have a peek at UniMag II, Two-Track Secure Mobile MagStripe Reader.