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Square Register

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Re: Square Register

#72

Post by dangrossman »

rythie wrote: post #69

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. Surely this is due soon in the U.S.? http://corporate.visa.com/media-center/press-releases/press1...

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).

Re: Square Register

#73

Post by etfb »

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?

Re: Square Register

#75

Post by yitchelle »

tricolon wrote: post #6

One piece is missing: a much more robust card reader that doesn't swivel or threaten to snap in two after a day of swiping.

Sounds like that is an opportunity to develop a card reader that can be tethered via a secure bluetooth connection. Any thoughts?

Re: Square Register

#76

Post by lusr »

etfb wrote: post #73

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 pay for everything I can with my credit card. It means I have a digital trail of all my spending, which makes budgeting much simpler.

Re: Square Register

#77

Post by urbanjunkie »

disappearance wrote: post #70
dangrossman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

Thanks. 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 r…

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.

Re: Square Register

#78

Post by urbanjunkie »

albahk wrote: post #43

The app is downloaded via the App Store - according to the terms of the app store, aren't Apple entitled to claim 30% of transactions through the app? edit: Or, at the very least, entitled to 30% of the fees charged by Square to the merchant?

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.

Re: Square Register

#79

Post by joelhaasnoot »

rplnt wrote: post #58
modeless wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.
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