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Square Cash

square.com

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Re: Square Cash

#201

Post by racbart »

meritt wrote: post #40

Seems to work amazingly although I'm a bit concerned about the security. A friend sent me $1. I get an email from square, link to website where I entered my debit #, expiry and postal. It deposited directly to my debit card (I didnt even know you could do that). The deposit already arrived! "Checking Card Adjustment POS Pin (Credit) $1.00" So I sent him $1 back (to: my friend, cc: cash@square.com, subject: $1). And i…

So one day you get an email that you got $100 and all you need to do as a recipient is to click on a link and enter your full credit card details? Sounds like a phishing paradise.

Re: Square Cash

#202

Post by ZoFreX »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #97
bcx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like this is probably more of a security feature. Prepaid cards are harder to track, and would be more suspect to fraud.

You know what's at least as hard to track and prone to fraud? Actual cash. I really dislike the idea that e.g. children shouldn't be able to pay for things over the internet because their identity can't be verified. Let's see some more support for prepaid cards.

Are pre-paid cards the only option for children in the states? I'm in the UK and I've had a debit card (attached to a bank account) since I was a young teenager.

Re: Square Cash

#203

Post by ZoFreX »

djhworld wrote: post #196
Tomdarkness wrote: post #33

This is one area where the US seems to be behind compared to the UK. I am from the UK and that service would look quite poor if it launched over here. We have a system called faster payments service that offers instant (although in some cases up to 2 hours) bank transfers for payments up to £100,000 (can differ between banks). You can use this directly if you share bank account numbers and sort codes but there are al…

Remembering people's bank account details is a nightmare though. I sometimes need to pay friends or family back for a meal or whatever, but going through the rigamarole of requesting their bank account details and then logging onto internet banking, going to the payment screen, putting their details in (making sure you don't mistype a digit in their bank account number) and then hoping you did everything OK is just a…

Both banks I've used recently (Natwest and Halifax, not that I can recommend either) keep a saved list of people you've paid in the past, so I only had to go through that dance once for each person I paid. For the people I paid most frequently it was very convenient, I could send them money in seconds using the Natwest Android app.

Re: Square Cash

#204

Post by ZoFreX »

threedaymonk wrote: post #169
Tomdarkness wrote: post #33

This is one area where the US seems to be behind compared to the UK. I am from the UK and that service would look quite poor if it launched over here. We have a system called faster payments service that offers instant (although in some cases up to 2 hours) bank transfers for payments up to £100,000 (can differ between banks). You can use this directly if you share bank account numbers and sort codes but there are al…

Faster payments are so fast in some cases that, transferring between accounts with different banks, I see an update in the recipient window before the sending bank website has finished serving the confirmation page!

On one occasion I asked someone to transfer me money while I was queueing for an ATM. Hung up the call and took the money out. It's FAST!

Re: Square Cash

#205

Post by addandsubtract »

abcd_f wrote: post #199

This needs an out-of-bound verification for the transfers. At the very least, it should confirm every new recipient - "Did you really mean to send $500 to yahoo@google.cc?" Seriously, I am all for the simplicity of the system and the flow of the narration, but where the heck is the explanation of how this is not trivially exploitable?

I just tried it (not being a square user) and got a confirmation email.

"You’re sending $1 to xxx@yyy.com Just link your Visa or MasterCard debit card to send this cash."

If I did sign up and not receive a confirmation email for any following transfers I send, then I agree, I'd be worried as well.

Re: Square Cash

#206

Post by woah »

ketralnis wrote: post #47
Tomdarkness wrote: post #33

This is one area where the US seems to be behind compared to the UK. I am from the UK and that service would look quite poor if it launched over here. We have a system called faster payments service that offers instant (although in some cases up to 2 hours) bank transfers for payments up to £100,000 (can differ between banks). You can use this directly if you share bank account numbers and sort codes but there are al…

The US equivalent is ACH, which has the major downside that using only the bank ID (routing number) and account number you can effectively wipe out the target's account. It's up to your bank (or whatever ACH proxy) to keep you from doing that, not to the interchange, both legally and technically. ACH also takes several days to work, and has a wide window for either bank to declare the transfer fraudulent, so many ban…

Could just use bitcoin.

Re: Square Cash

#207

Post by netcan »

abalone wrote: post #200
netcan wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but maybe not. The dotcom did get some things right. The internet is a big deal. There are land grab markets. They got timing and lots of other details wrong. Maybe they will need to have a freemium offering long term to avoid too balance this if they start hitting millions of active users. It should be easy enough to get $5 pm from big users. They are playing for a big market(s) here. Very big. If bthey are p…

I didn't say dot com got anything wrong. I'm saying raising hundreds of millions of VC dollars and practically giving it away is a dot com era strategy. Remember when PayPal paid out a $20 referral bonus for each new customer? Yeah, those days.

If you say dotcom, the association is over-investing, ridiculously irrational valuation of companies/users/hits, pets.com, bankruptcy, find-the-bigger-fool, etc.

Re: Square Cash

#208

Post by askew »

djhworld wrote: post #196
Tomdarkness wrote: post #33

This is one area where the US seems to be behind compared to the UK. I am from the UK and that service would look quite poor if it launched over here. We have a system called faster payments service that offers instant (although in some cases up to 2 hours) bank transfers for payments up to £100,000 (can differ between banks). You can use this directly if you share bank account numbers and sort codes but there are al…

Remembering people's bank account details is a nightmare though. I sometimes need to pay friends or family back for a meal or whatever, but going through the rigamarole of requesting their bank account details and then logging onto internet banking, going to the payment screen, putting their details in (making sure you don't mistype a digit in their bank account number) and then hoping you did everything OK is just a…

Ah - I was under the impression PingIt could be used by non-Barclays customers.

That said, NatWest's mobile app also allows this behaviour: I can send a contact a text with a link allowing them to deposit the amount specified: up to £250.

Re: Square Cash

#209

Post by mhenr18 »

bloopletech wrote: post #182
vacri wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and they're universally free for the payer. Not quite. Vendors can now legally add a surcharge to cover the cost for payments from a credit card. Some vendors traditionally refused Amex when they had to eat the charge, since Amex was something like a 4-5% cost to the vendor as opposed to the 1-2% costs of the other cards. Why, in a small, stagnant market like ours, do we fare much better than the US system? We have s…

Credit card transactions do sometimes have fees attached; specifically I was referring to EFT, which for person-to-person has no fees at all, and doesn't attract fees to the payer at the POS (whereas credit cards can). Yeah, the real question I was getting at was, given the Australian market is even more insular and stagnant than the US, why do we have much better systems? What you're saying sounds plausible; a compa…

I never realised how good we had it comparatively in Australia. I always just thought that Eftpos was something that "just worked" and that everyone around the world had (or at least an equivalent). No fees, no credit, no monthly payments, no bullshit. Just a card that you use to pay for things out of your bank account.

No processing times too :)

Re: Square Cash

#210

Post by jhardcastle »

jey wrote: post #32

They're obviously taking a loss on this (due to credit card fees) if the recipient gets the full amount sent. So this must be a loss-leader that's building up to something else where they expect to make a ton of money. That "something" is most likely just "replacing cash and cards", but will be interesting to see how it plays out. It's a bold move regardless. EDIT: I meant debit card transaction fees, not credit card…

Square has had a system called Wallet for several years where if you enter a store using Square, and it detects your phone in the vicinity, you can "pay by name." You walk up to the register, say "I'm John Smith," and they tap your name on the Square register to check you out. No need to take your phone out of your pocket.

Perhaps this is just an attempt to backdoor people into becoming users of Square Wallet. Give away person-to-person transactions for free, get a massive user base for business-to-consumer transactions and charge the businesses for the use of your network.

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