Have an iPhone? Then all you need to take credit card payments from potential buyers, anywhere, is Square – a new accessory that plugs into your phone and allows you to swipe a customers’ card and accept payments, anywhere. As a payer, you can create a Square profile which will allow sellers to use photo verification, and email/text your receipts to you. You can also login to the Square site and view your receipts securely.
In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment. Even though a majority of payments has moved to plastic cards, accepting payments from cards is still difficult, requiring long applications, expensive hardware, and an overly complex experience. Square was born a few days later…
Shouldn’t all receipts be this clear and beautiful:
Square does good too – paperless transactions are friendly to the environment and a penny from every transaction is donated to the charity of the sellers’ choice.
Square is currently in limited beta and will begin rolling out early 2010. Eventually it will actually work with any device with a headphone jack and internet connection, but it will initially work on the iPhone/iPod touch only. Follow them at www.squareup.com or @Square.
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This is fantastic.
10:18 am
Does this work on the iPod touch as well? Because that would be amazing.
10:23 am
Whups, stupid comment. The only paragraph I didn’t read was the last one. -fail-
10:25 am
As long as there’s an internet connection :)
10:30 am
WOW.
12:04 pm
This could change the way people to do business. Door to door sales, beach sales, etc.
11:08 am
Well…
Square app with iPhone/iPod Touch is not quite “all you need to take credit card payments from potential buyers.”
You still need a merchant account with a commercial bank. Getting one and negotiating the terms is actually slightly more complicated than buying the widget and plugging it into your iPhone.
Yes, agreed. It’s still a fantastic thing. I thought there was already an attachment like this that didn’t use a phone jack but the iPod connector…
7:44 pm
I don’t know if you need a merchant account with a bank to use this app. From what I’m reading about Square, it’s going to be a lot like Paypal with transaction handling and payment processing. No sure why a bank will need to be involved.
1:19 pm
This is going to be even better with the iPad.
2:27 pm