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Square Cash

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Re: Square Cash

#211

Post by roel_v »

downandout wrote: post #149
acchow wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with no way to cancel the mistaken one. I see a "cancel" link in the email Square Cash sends me.

I did notice that there is a cancel link in the original email - a very small link at the bottom - but they should make it possible to remove any of the transactions it tries to compile together on the sending screen. Having to go back, find the email, and hit the cancel link after you realize that they are including transactions that you had no intention of completing isn't exactly intuitive. There is also nothing a…

" and hit the cancel link after you realize that they are including transactions that you had no intention of completing"

Why are you starting transactions you don't intend on completing anyway? I haven't tried it, but from what I've read so far the workflow seems perfectly reasonable for the vast majority of transactions. It's not like when I pay a friend the 10$ back he fronted me last week in the bar when I forgot my wallet, that I give it to another friend first and say 'hold on to this for a bit while I ponder whether to actually go through with this 'transaction''.

Re: Square Cash

#212

Post by flavor8 »

djhworld wrote: post #197
takluyver wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having recently moved from the UK to the US, I was quite shocked at the state of US banking. In the UK we can transfer money for free, use many ATMs free (not just the bank's own), we get free chequebooks, and there are plenty of accounts with no monthly fees. My US bank has a whole list of charges, and it's not made up by higher interest rates.

UK banks do the same, they just charge their fees to people who go overdrawn instead. There's no such thing as "free banking" in the UK

As another person who has lived in both places, banking is a lot freer in the UK. Yes, UK banks charge overdraft fees - but so do US banks. Most US banks will charge you to send you replacement checkbooks; many will even charge you a monthly fee to maintain the account. There are notable exceptions, but they don't have mass market buy-in.

Re: Square Cash

#213

Post by neolefty »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #109
judk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual cash is nearly impossible to fraud/counterfeit. Are you a parent? I do not have want to my kid buying products unfettered.

I hate to break this to you, but they can already buy things in physical stores. And if you legitimately have a $20 bill, I can walk into a store, represent that it's mine, and buy things with it, never encountering an obstacle along the way. That's the same fraud you're worried about in prepaid cards.

Of course they can, but as a parent, I find it easier to supervise their store purchases than their online purchases, because they have to physically go there, and I can notice it.

Re: Square Cash

#214

Post by makomk »

garethadams wrote: post #184
cormacrelf wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just got an email from you. Not so suss.

No, they just got an email from someone that happened to have my address in the `From` field. Since we're in the realm of phishing already, let's not forget that people still commonly enter their email address and email password into sites claiming to "Find your friends who are using this service". The problem with social attacks is that they spread socially, and it's not enough for just "some", or even "most" people…

What also doesn't help is that sites like Facebook leak personal information like sieves. I've been receiving the spam e-mails claiming to be from various of my Facebook friends for some time.

Re: Square Cash

#215

Post by wildfire »

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…

Actually EFT does have fees. Typically between 10c - 25c / transaction.

They are minimal, but they are there.

Plus the fee for the terminal of course. Which varies significantly between banks in AU.

Re: Square Cash

#216

Post by wildfire »

bloopletech wrote: post #168
ketralnis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you serious? Why would _anyone_ design a system like this? In Australia, the equivalent is EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). You can deposit money to anyone's account by telling the bank their BSB (Bank/State/Branch number) and their account number; however this is not sufficient information to withdraw money. To withdraw money: 1. at a physical bank branch: a. you put your credit/debit card in a POS terminal and…

> All forms of EFT take 1-2 business days between banks, > pretty much all the time; and they're universally free for > the payer.

Other people have already weighed in on the fact that actually not all of the payment systems are free for the payer (even EFT via a terminal costs).

But ask yourself, why does it take 1-2 business day for this to happen? In the UK, the worst case scenario is 2 hours between different banks. And if the account transfer is within the same bank, it is instant.

In AU, even between St. George accounts you can see delays of up to 1 day. Insane! Especially since the money isn't changing banks but accounts within the bank.

The AU transfer delay is bizarre.

Re: Square Cash

#217

Post by dools »

wildfire wrote: post #216
bloopletech wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Why would _anyone_ design a system like this? In Australia, the equivalent is EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). You can deposit money to anyone's account by telling the bank their BSB (Bank/State/Branch number) and their account number; however this is not sufficient information to withdraw money. To withdraw money: 1. at a physical bank branch: a. you put your credit/debit card in a POS terminal and…

> All forms of EFT take 1-2 business days between banks, > pretty much all the time; and they're universally free for > the payer. Other people have already weighed in on the fact that actually not all of the payment systems are free for the payer (even EFT via a terminal costs). But ask yourself, why does it take 1-2 business day for this to happen? In the UK, the worst case scenario is 2 hours between different ban…

Every bank I've been with (Commonwealth, ANZ and Bendigo) has instant transfers between accounts within the same bank.

Re: Square Cash

#218

Post by dalys »

I was just impressed by how the colors of the buttons in the top left corner (when idling at the section with the video background) is synchronized with the color theme of the video background.

Re: Square Cash

#219

Post by IanCal »

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…

> The automatic-authorization appears to only apply when it's between two previously validated parties.

This doesn't feel quite right, as you describe it you'd validated that it's ok to receive money from them, not send it. I'd be more comfortable if it was validated in some way when you first send something to a person. Receiving money doesn't mean I trust a person.

I could send you a dollar, and when you accept it I could fake an email back giving me 100. I hope this only happens with signed emails.

About DKIM, does it stop someone from repeating an email? Could I fake an identical email that has been sent before? If so, that's something that normally wouldn't be an issue (duplicate emails aren't really a problem, you can't inject any information, change links to dodgy sites) but would be huge for sending money.

EDIT - from the DKIM site

> DKIM does not protect against re-sending (replay of) a message that already has a valid signature; therefore a transit intermediary or a recipient can re-post the message in such a way that the signature would remain valid, although the new recipient(s) would not have been specified by the originator.

EDIT2 - Squares security page is brief and, well, sounds odd

> detects suspicious behavior in real-time, and in many instances, even before it happens.

How do you detect behaviour before it happens? Isn't that inherently impossible?

Re: Square Cash

#220

Post by icebraining »

vacri wrote: post #175
bloopletech wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Why would _anyone_ design a system like this? In Australia, the equivalent is EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). You can deposit money to anyone's account by telling the bank their BSB (Bank/State/Branch number) and their account number; however this is not sufficient information to withdraw money. To withdraw money: 1. at a physical bank branch: a. you put your credit/debit card in a POS terminal and…

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…

We have strong banking regulations, apparently. I heard somewhere that during the GFC, there were only ten banks of that kind globally that hung on to their AAA credit rating, and all four of the Australian big banks were in that ten.

Our bank regulations are a joke (in the last few years, we just nationalized a fraudulent bank for €2.7 billion and re-sold it for €30 million), and yet we have a similar system, plus free virtual CCs, plus an award-winning ATM network that doesn't charge any fees for usage/withdraws.

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