I saw a poor barista trying dozens of times to make the reader accept a card the other day (Square + iPad, not sure if they were using this exact set up). It got quite violent. The scanner does really seem to be far too flimsy to be the primary payment mechanism in a busy business.
True. I used Square's NFC-like Card Case app at the same coffee shop and the experience was much better. It was a little disconcerting to complete a transaction without an physically action like a swipe or button press though.
Came here to say this. The software itself is really awesome, and they have done some great UI/UX work here, but the hardware experience is still very frustrating. I'm really surprised they haven't iterated on the hardware. It's been what, two years since they started sending out the first set of scanners?
While a case solution on the iPhone would work well, I can see why they might not do this for the iPad (designing an entire case, just for card swiping, for such a large device seems silly and wasteful), but something along the lines of this would be a huge improvement over the current card reader design (basically, it fits around the corner of the device, giving it much more stability): http://olloclip.com
Smart think to do would be to make it two pieces. Take the existing card reader but have an additional attachment that does exactly what you said, add stability by holding onto the corners. If a customer wants something small, they have that. Or they can get something for the load. Best part is that it would make manufacturing a breeze still all you would be creating would be a few versions of an injection mold.
Agreed. More flexibility for the shop and easier to replace/upgrade the "working" part ... How long until a kick starter project opens up offering this?
Its probably about time for them to lose the "headphone jack" idea for commercial systems. Its a cute hack to give Apple the finger for rent seeking the damn serial port when you're a fresh young startup, but they're big boys now. Time for serial or bluetooth.
With Bluetooth on, I don't see how a store will make it through an entire day without going through at least one iPhone battery charge. It would defeat the purpose.
Bigger stores can probably use an iPad instead, but I don't think we'll see a Bluetooth solution for the above reason.
I'd add on top of that, that a bluetooth stream of data could be vulnerable to a nearby hack. If something else than the square device were to be created it would probably make use of cell network.
Actual wireless card device processor cost around $800. That let place for square to come up w/ something.
I noticed a local business (Blue Moon Burgers) using iPads as registers, using similarly flimsy (though not Square) card readers. They gave up after a few months and switched to a traditional POS setup. I don't know whether it was the card readers that were to blame, but I'm guessing they were part of it.
External card reader would be much more expensive because it has to (IIRC banks enforce it (probably thanks to insurance companies)) encrypt all communication with the "register" (in this case iPad). So it can't be just some dummy device.
You can make a dummy device that works exactly the same way but has a large physical footprint can't you? Yes, it has a higher cost, but POS systems are very costly too.
A few weeks ago I was at a little tea shop run by a technology savvy Indian lady. When she said she didn't take cards, I asked her if she'd heard of Square.
Of course she'd heard of Square. She said she didn't use it because it was too flimsy to handle the load.
Intuit's competitor actually has a really elegant design-- there is an air-filled rubber chamber at the bottom that grips on to the top of the device to prevent movement. http://gopayment.com/how_it_works/
That being said, Intuit's UI is hideous, Square's is gorgeous.
I cringe when I see the picture. There's no reason that it could be a more elongated piece of plastic with a notch cut out that cradles the edge of the iPad in that spot. Sure, it means a different model for different iPads... but fortunately there are a limited number of variations of devices to accommodate.
I can't actually remember the last time I swiped my card and signed for anything, because we in the U.K., like most of Europe, use Chip and Pin (EMV is the official name). I wonder if Square will still function when this gets pushed into the U.S. market.
Square will be in trouble if NFC takes off. That is why its coming up with what I think is its main product line, the register. The credit card reader thingy is not where it makes money. Once prople get hooked on the analytics it can hope to add the NFC functionality in and still keep going.
Square seems to be attempting to counter NFC with Card Case[1]. Still requires the merchant to be using Square, but has the upshot of working /now/, with the cards/phones you already have, instead of maybe in a year or two when ISIS gets it's act together.
Square as a company isn't tied to credit card processing. Credit cards just happens to what's popular now. If NFC takes off, the company will run with it. When that happens, the shops just need a new attachment or a device upgrade, the software just works.
NFC contactless payment readers are already common here in big retail chains now. By the time the consumer adoption becomes more widespread, most phones and tablets will have NFC radios in them as well, so it'll just be a matter of software support (e.g. Google Wallet).
I don't like how, as the customer, I have no way of seeing what exactly is being charged to my card. For all I know, anything could be running on that ipad (foreground or background) and i could be charged any amount without knowing. Sure, I can ask for a receipt, but even the legacy till they replace in the video has a customer facing display, not a shiny piece of aluminum with some fruit. It's interesting that video never switches to the customer view either.
I used to work at a retail outfit that used the really old-fashioned credit card system involving carbon paper slips and handwritten amounts, which would be entered into a credit card processing system at another location at a later time. We could have essentially charged whatever amount we wanted, and this was fairly apparent to anyone who paid via credit card. And yet, out of every thousand people who go to pay with a credit card, I could probably count on one hand the people who express any serious concern about this fact.
Businesses have an incentive in maintaining their reputation and not getting into trouble with payment processors, and I generally think people assume any business approved by a payment processor is probably sufficiently low-risk to give a credit card.
any business approved by a payment processor is essentially zero-risk. if you ever get an unauthorized charge on your credit card, it is trivially easy to have the charges reversed.
Every time I've had someone swipe my card via Square in a coffee shop, the barista has turned the iPad towards me to view my order/sign, which is more than what happens with a standard POS setup.
When you would normally sign a printed receipt, you sign with your finger on the iPad with the Square app (most implementations I've seen have iPads on a swivel stand that turns around to face the customer). In the example video they show a customer being charged via Card Case which is the more integrated form of transaction but not the common case.
I've seen this a handled a few ways, depending on the merchant.
1. They show me the price before submitting it. I ask for a receipt sent to my email, which they need to type in, but I get it on my own phone immediately. The clerks I've seen do this HATE having to type in my email address because they invariably type it incorrectly.
2. The ipad swivel. I sign with a stylus, type in my own email address and choose to send the receipt that way. The whole time I'm talked through it all by the merchant. I prefer this method.
3. The clerk just rings me up and never bothers to offer the receipt, but I ask anyway, because, like the grandparent post, I don't quite trust these things for some reason yet. The clerk has no idea how to do it, so I end up showing her and then tell her about the swivel mounts and the stylus.
From my experience of paying with Square, I only had to manually enter my email + phone number the first time I paid. Every time since then it's been automatically populated. Swipe, sign and the receipt is in my email second later.
How is this any different than a traditional POS? The only exceptions would be cash registers with pole displays, which are limited to big box retailers that can afford them.
Not sure about where you're at, but it's a rarity to come across a register that doesn't have a customer facing display, with at the very least, the total you are being charged for your goods and/or services.
No other startup has ever been so primed for an Apple acquisition. Everything from execution, design sensibility, culture and even CEO is heavily Apple inspired but in a different but still complementary industry.
Square and Apple seems like a great cultural fit. But I don't think there is a snowball's chance in hell Apple is even mildly interested in acquiring them, as it would make zero business sense to do so. And the feeling is probably mutual.
I don't know about that yet. Mobile payments is a hot category. While some are looking at it from the perspective of using your cell phone to make purchases, square is looking at it in the reverse. It's probably the best positioned POS system ever for the long tail that doesn't have or want a traditional POS terminal. To Apple is could be a resource to entering the iPad as the defacto kiosk to all things touch market.
Yeah, except for the fact that both Jack Dorsey and Keith Rabois are both already horrendously wealthy and almost certainly have no interest in being acquired.
That would be an almost funny turn of events. My neighbor is a recruiter at Square and I'm 100% positive that they try to recruit exclusively out of Apple's hardware teams. These are the people that are looking for their next win and already know their way around the China factories where the Square's are made.
It's an area ripe for disruption. Apple is already a payment processor (iTunes) and has easy to use touchscreen devices (iPad). Seems like a good fit to me.
Slightly tangential note - Square has the most gorgeous product videos I've seen from a startup. Their jobs section even lists an open position for doing these so I guess they do them in house. Very impressive.
What I do wonder though, is why they're shipping this with such a terrible stand/card reader attachment? I can't see those lasting 6 months in a busy shop environment. I'd like to see a swivel stand that's locked to the counter which you can slide the ipad into, then bolt secure and lock with a key. While you're at it, build a robust card reader into the side of the case. Basically something similar in form factor to this: http://www.directindustry.com/prod/elo-touchsystems/touch-sc...
I could probably put something like that together in a weekend with a trip to fry's/home depot, but why should I have to?
Also, a question I'd have before using this - what happens in the event of a software crash? Where is my data, how quickly does stuff get backed up online?
Most likely because a lot of their business relies on easily being able to provide a ton of people with free card readers. I'm sure they've explored a more robust option, but it's probably nowhere near as cheap as the current model.
Maybe a paid upgrade card reader is the next step, but if their goal is broad, cheap and easy distribution they'll probably be shipping with this model for a long time.
I'm not suggesting this is free, by any means. However, given the cost of buying existing POS hardware solutions, I'm confident I could handcraft bespoke ipad cases with card readers, sell them an ipad and still make a profit, all while undercutting a more traditional setup.
Agreed with the paid upgrade. Businesses are ready to pay for such things, especially when they bought a $500 iPad just for the purpose... what's $15 on a card reader? As was suggested, a cheap and free reader as well as a paid upgrade would work well I think.
This looks awesome! It's important they get this kind of product right on the first release -- because small business owners can't tolerate 'beta' for something so critical as their cash register.
Case in point: One of my favorite restaurants in Seattle was using iPads for registers (not using Square's product). I came back a few months later and they had switched to a 'normal' POS system. "What happened to the iPads?" I asked. "There were too many issues and they crashed way too often." It was a case of a restaurant that wanted to be on the cutting edge -- but in the end it didn't work out, so they went with a standard solution that worked well.
I don't doubt that square can execute -- they have already shipped some great products. I just want to point out that it's not as simple as some people might imagine.
Scanning through the page, I noticed one oddity in the screenshots: the "Add an Optional Tip" page showed various fixed-size tips, but no way to enter an arbitrary amount. In previous versions of the interface, I thought the UI had an option to enter an arbitrary tip amount.
Must be an American thing, I guess. Is EFTPOS (ie debit card) less common in the US than in Australia? Seems odd to provide a credit card service by itself. People don't pay for coffee and things on credit, do they?
I would venture to say a majority of American 20-somethings use a card as much as possible. My bank PNC has a decent toolset that allows you to do a lot of things automatically and includes a basic budgeting tool. It's pretty cool.
For every checking account I've had in the US, I've been given a debit card with a MasterCard/Visa logo on it, which can be used as credit or debit. Both methods deduct money from the same checking account, so using it as a credit card isn't really using credit, although it does come with credit card fraud protection when using it online.
I always pick credit at the terminal because it's faster and more secure than entering my PIN at some random POS, although the merchant then has to pay a credit card fee on that transaction.
But to answer your question: yes, lots of people pay for coffee with actual credit cards. Some like the budgeting, some like the rewards/cashback that come with many credit cards, and some people are just bad with their money.
VISA merchant rules generally guarantee that the plastic price will match the cash price. It's true that the merchant raises prices to compensate, but paying cash doesn't avoid that charge -- everyone pays the CC tax regardless of payment method. So you might as well get some of it back.
I pay for most of my purchases using my checking account, but I believe it's processed through Visa. I am often presented with a debit/credit option, so could be wrong there.
Don't forget that there is a lot of inertia in the States due to the huge population. It would be much more difficult to role out a national payment network here than in Australia. It's easier to piggy back on the system set up by the credit card companies than it is to get all the banks to work together.
There are a couple of other factors that make cards more appealing here too. Sales tax is added at the till. Where I live it's 8.75%. This means I can't know ahead of time what I owe and prepare the correct coins and notes. Additionally, I use Mint to track and categorize my spending. It sounds silly but it makes it so easy to track my budgets when I pay for everything by card.
I've always wanted to know about the 'international version' of Eftpos. A lot of internationals get confused at our Cheque/Savings/Credit.
Also, the large majority of banks offer Mastercard/Visa debit cards where even though you press 'Credit', its your money from your Savings account. You get the benefit of more consumer protection via Mastercard/Visa, as well as contactless payment and sometimes not having to sign or enter PIN
Credit cards offer more protection for the consumer than a debit card. Using a debit card is just as bad as using a cheque. It's 2012. Use a credit card. Pay it off monthly.
I would love to see a slight modification to the design of their reader hardware. Keep the audio interface, obviously. But design a small plastic frame that the reader can fit into that fits flush against the edge of the top of the iPad/iPhone. Make it a bit longer with slightly sloped internal edges so that its easier to guide a credit card to the scanner. This will also have the benefit keeping the reader from swiveling around while in use. Actually sounds like a Kickstarter project if Square doesn't come out with it themselves soon.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but desensitising the general public to devices that their card is being scanned through (and occasions where that might be appropriate) will surely lead to to an increase in card fraud.
What's to stop someone jailbreaking an ipad, writing a custom fake ui, clipping in a square scanner, and writing off a days worth of cheap merchandise down at the park for a haul of card details?
If this becomes common, will credit card companies still offer the same guarantees on transactions?
> What's to stop someone ... writing off a days worth of cheap merchandise down at the park for a haul of card details?
The fact that stolen credit card numbers, even with a full billing address and CVV2 code are still only worth a couple dollars on the black market. Your setup wouldn't even capture that, so your merchandise is probably worth more than the numbers. And you're putting yourself at pretty serious risk of getting caught by running this scam in person, when it's much easier to do some kind of phishing scam online anonymously, with more valuable results.
Stolen credit card numbers just aren't very valuable. If you're not living in a nation with an ineffective or corrupt legal system, what are you going to do with the numbers without a high risk of getting caught? Making your own plastic cards and magnetic tracks is expensive and you end up on security camera video using them. Ordering anything tangible online means linking your fraud to your physical location one way or another. You can order a bunch of porn or other intangibles, but that's a pretty low reward for all the risk.
In the end, it's a moot point anyway. Normal credit card terminals can be bought on eBay for less than an iPad and can be used for card theft just the same.
In europe we use chip and pin, so a fake app could collect the pin directly. If someone was to harvest 30 cards with pin, could they then visit an atm directly? Perhaps I'm underestimating the difficulty of cloning cards. If that is possible, CVV2 would be unnecessary.
I hear your point about normal credit card terminals being available. As a european I wouldn't expect to see one on a stall by the side of a road though, and would normally be suspicious of anyone suggesting that they accept credit cards under these conditions.
Perhaps I'm underestimating the difficulty of cloning cards.
I don't know how the bank cards work, but here in Portugal we now have a citizen's ID card that looks much like a bank card and can actually do cryptographic operations itself - it has a private RSA key that it can use to sign and encrypt data by request of the card reader. It's essentially impossible to clone the card, at least without breaking it.
EDIT: According to this article[1], PIN-and-chip bank cards are similar to what I'm describing.
And that's why you need a separate terminal to enter your PIN (at least here in the UK, although I'm fairly sure that also applied in Europe), and the PIN number is never transmitted to the actual POS application, just a token indicating success or failure.
Right, but in this instance the 'terminal' to confirm your pin and POS application are one and the same, and ultimately just replaceable software on an iOS device.
I wonder if they plan to open a web store interface, so users can purchase things without an iPad... I've been looking for a sexy place to set up shop, but my business doesn't have walk-in customers. I know that's not really square's game though
There's lots of talk about the survival of the Square reader under heavy demand, certainly another more durable reader needs to be produced.
However is the market for square at this price point really for anything above one or maybe two point of sales?
Using this setup in some bar environments would require some hardware to protect the iPad, I've worked looking after hardware in busy student union bars where the staff just destroy the tills with spillages.
My impression of the earlier square products for POS were that it's intended for giving the small business something, not for running your local branch of Starbucks.
This could be a game changer. Restuarant management software is a space that needs innovation as well - I'd be surprised if they don't roll something out that incorporates both payments and reservations.
I don't understand where the actual cash came from in the video. Would this mean I still have to have a register to store the cash in? Wouldn't this make the whole process borked again?
Did anybody go through the verification process when ordering the device? After I input some basic info (like my birthday and last 4 digits of my SSN), I was asked to answer questions I have no idea how they even came up with.
One example is, "What hospital did you live near when you were on RandomName St.?"
How did they immediately know what street I lived on some years back, and also that it was near a major hospital?
The authentication was all pretty impressive, but kind of creepy too.
They must be using KBA (knowledge based authentication) service for identity checks.
There are data aggregator companies (big ones are the credit bureaus but there are others as well) who compile all sorts of orthogonal data points about you (like the color of your first car, your mortgage amount) and in theory generate identity check questions that only the real you can answer all of them correctly.
Some more info: http://www.rsa.com/press_release.aspx?id=9459
That doesn't seem like a useful security question at all. Anyone can trivially find out the answer via online maps, and meanwhile the actual person who lived at that location might not necessarily know the answer themselves without looking it up. At most, if you use it as a trick question ("Hah, caught you, the person you wanted to authenticate as never lived on RandomName St!"), you get one bit of information, which you could get much more straightforwardly by asking "Have you ever lived on RandomName St?".
Street names are quite common though, knowing the street name is unlikely to give you enough information to answer the question. The real person however, would know the location of the street and be able to use this to look up the right answer if they didn't already know.
I suspect they request your credit report with your personal info (if you are a business requesting the report on someone else, you don't need the full SSN) and pull the information from there. Finding a hospital near your address just requires knowing where hospitals are, and those are in public directories.
I love Square's work to date. The way they've changed the retail and hospitality industry for the better, and looking damn good while doing so. That being said, I can't say I'm a huge fan of the Register icon. Even the Card Case icon is strobing a bit on this monitor.
Agreed. It doesn't really communicate anything about the application. It has the square logo, but those colored squares could be anything. Items or inventory aren't what come to mind. The app looks cool though.
I'm drawing up a design to make them a better stand. What they have just looks like it's waiting to get pushed off a counter.
They are only a few blocks away, I could just drop it off.
It's great to see a company taking an existing product (iPad) and building on top of it's powerful software and hardware.
Instead of stores having to buy some expensive & clunky cash register or crazy expensive PoS solution; they can pop down to their local Apple or electronics store & buy a future PoS device.
It's very powerful when anyone can start accepting payments by just popping down to their local electronics store.
As opposed to an Apple? I get that the logo is modelled on the dongle (which may or may not get phased out), but it's extremely generic and will probably not work very well for branding purposes in the future.
I wonder what Jack Dorsey is thinking, while reading of all these. I seriously doubt he worries about "...one retailer and they weren't using the device because the square was too wonky ..." It just sounds like a problem too easy to fix, and I am sure they've got bigger fish to fry.
Dorsey is definitely reading, or I certainly hope he is!
Good information here. Lot's of valid points, complaints, arguments. There are many ways to improve Square, the UI, the hardware, the usability, training, etc. They have a solid product.
Pretty sure Apple and Square have a special agreement in place. At a talk I went to by Jack Dorsey he said they met with Apple before launching Square.
Although the immediate parent is being downvoted, it's actually interesting to understand why Apple have allowed this without collecting a % of the transaction fees that Square receives.
Or perhaps they are collecting a (lower?) percentage.
From what I understand In-app purchases (where Apple gets a 30% cut) are only required when the item is only for use from within the app (virtual currency, level packs, digital subscription etc). Purchasing a physical items does not require transaction to use Apple's IAP API. In fact, it is expressly forbidden.
This is a gimmick or a hack. Not much better than what you will see on hackaday.com
I did a LOT of POS work a few years ago for small businesses. An iPad/iPhone would be dead and broken in less than a month for most retailers. You need pretty hard wearing industrial grade kit if you don't want to throw it away 3 times a year. That flimsy card reader is almost comedic - you'll break it and your device.
If it's your revenue collection equipment, it makes sense to buy something that will last i.e. was designed for the job rather than sit there not being able to take cards.
Apple uses iPod touches with a more beefy card reader setup in their retail stores. You could do the same with a slightly modified iPad case, and a reinforced reader.
