PayPal kills the cash register — and offers completely free payment processing for 2013

PayPal’s killing the cash register and offering free credit, debit, check, and PayPal processing to qualifying U.S. businesses that adopt its PayPal Here solution — for the rest of 2013.

In other words, PayPal is all in.

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PayPal Here, which offers a triangle dongle to compete with a certain rival’s Square, offers a mobile dongle that you can attach to smartphones or tablets to take payments on the go. But it’s also now a pre-integrated solution for existing point-of-sale machines from multiple vendors such as ERPLY, Leaf, Leapset, NCR Silver, ShopKeep, and Vend.

“The cash register has been a familiar sight for generations, but it’s time to replace it with a modern solution,” PayPal says.

While PayPal was late to this particular game, it has quickly added partners like Home Depot and Abercrombie & Fitch, and, after being available just in North America for some time, recently entered the UK. And the company absolutely crushes all other competitors — including Google, MasterCard, and Visa — in consumer awareness for its digital wallet services.

But the real juice in this latest program is the free payment processing for the rest of the year. That’s huge to merchants who are looking to squeeze a few extra percentage points of profit out of typically skinny retail margins. Payment processors can easily take one to three percent of a company’s gross sales, right off the top.

Merchants can also skip the cash register upgrade and simply go directly to an iPad solution with PayPal Here running as an app, in which case PayPal Here can connect wirelessly to a cash drawer and printer.