Here is another awesome innovation of iPhone that further proves “There is an app for that!”. On Tuesday, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced his new venture, Square, that lets anyone with an iPhone to accept credit card payment:
“The basic idea behind Square is that everyone has this little plastic device in their pocket today, which is a payment card, credit card, debit card or pre-paid card, and they’re using them everywhere, they’re using them to buy anything,” explained Dorsey in a TechCrunch video demonstration. “We found that very interesting, and we wanted to turn on the other side of that — we wanted to allow people to very easily and quickly, within 10 seconds, be able to accept these plastic devices as payment.”
That’s truly amazing. Credit card payment on the go! And, here is how it works:
With a little plastic magnetic card reader attached to iPhone’s audio input jack, the merchant can use the iPhone to swipe credit card and process the payment. After swiping the credit card, the little Square device converts the credit card information into audio signals, which then sends to the Square’s iPhone app. The Square app further encrypts the data and transmits back to Square’s server system over WiFi or 3G for further processing.
When the transaction is approved, the Square app lets the customer to sign right on the touch-screen using finger. The customer can choose to send the receipt via email or SMS (see below for sample). That completes a credit card payment on iPhone.
With the Square device and iPhone, anyone can now be a merchant and accept mobile payment anywhere. You can further check out the video and see how the customer pay for a coffee via the Square device:
Starting next week, Square will be rolled out to small vendors and some cafes in San Francisco locations for beta testing. If you get a chance to pay via the Square device and iPhone, remember to leave us comment and let us know your experience.
[image via squareup.com]
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Square seems like a good device, and Dorsey has certainly launched an effective PR Campaign. But Square is not the only mobile payments solution for the iPhone.
For the last four months I have been using iSwipe by AppNinjas for my private tutoring business. It works really well, and is easy to set up. Has most of the features of Square.
http://appninjas.com/iswipe/
Just want to point out that Square is not the only option for mobile payments.
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