111–120 of 141 posts
How does the system handle the common use-case where you give a third party (wife,friend,kid,..) the money to go and pay the bill.
Both Facecash and now Square Card Case have this problem, but maybe I have missed something.
> Paying for stuff with your phone sounds awesome until you stop to think about it. Uh, it doesn't sound awesome to me at all. It sounds annoying and frustrating. Swiping a credit card is already pretty simple. > then tell the cashier your name Yeah, because that works great. My name is fairly common, and cashiers still manage to get it wrong, especially if it's noisy. Also, what happens when three "John Smiths" walk…
> If a restaurant's going to go to all the trouble to install a system like this and set it up so that my phone can pay them, why couldn't I just order on the phone? Then I wouldn't have to stand in line at all, and they won't have wasted their time if it turns out that I want something else instead of what I usually get. Because a smooth face to face interaction is much more pleasant than ordering via an online appl…
And that is the thing I loved the most about this concept. It is one of very few recent technological innovations that actually enhances face to face social interactions.
By requiring you to tell your name, you now have an "excuse" to introduce yourself and get on a name basis with people you often see day out and day in but who most people might otherwise have a very impersonal contact with.
Just try giving shop assistants eye contact. Most places they're not used to people even looking them in the eye, and the entire quality of your experience and interaction with them go up tenfold if you make sure to make eye contact and smile. But we tend to mumble down into our wallets stuck in our own worlds and ignore that there's a human on the other side of the till. I used to do that as I'm strongly introverted normally, but a few years back I started forcing myself to focus on peoples faces whenever I pay, or enter the bus or whatever type of transaction it is, and it makes such a difference in overall degree of human contact (and it makes the response you get from the other person dramatically more friendly)
As an example, there's a bus driver who frequently drives my local bus, that I've gone to the same gym as for more than 5 years. I never even recognized him until I decided to start focusing on giving more eye contact. Now we greet each other warmly and talk whenever we see each other.
I thought this was "just me" before I took action to change it, but the more I did it the more I saw how taken aback a lot of the people I did it to were, and how out of their way a lot of people I'd give eye contact would go to do things for me - as it turns out even otherwise very social people often completely blank people in these situations. We "switch off" socially in large number of situations.
I think Square could have the potential to be far more important to the world for its possibility of disrupting social interactions than its mere impact on commerce...
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> If a restaurant's going to go to all the trouble to install a system like this and set it up so that my phone can pay them, why couldn't I just order on the phone? Then I wouldn't have to stand in line at all, and they won't have wasted their time if it turns out that I want something else instead of what I usually get. Because a smooth face to face interaction is much more pleasant than ordering via an online appl…
Ordering a saved pizza order that we order frequently at Papa John's is incredibly easy -- certainly way easier than telling the order to someone. I suppose it's possible that coffee is different in some non-obvious way, but I'm not sure how.
I am the cofounder of a startup that builds an iOS/iPod/iPad POS Ambur, and it's absolutely astonishing to me to see people claim Square is doing anything useful for merchants. Their software is far too simplistic for anyone running more than a very basic coffee shop with tech savvy customers to use. Even something as simple as most customers demand paper receipts, and Square's functionality is taking basic orders, o…
What happens when the merchant doesn't care he's paid by the right customer? How does the system handle the common use-case where you give a third party (wife,friend,kid,..) the money to go and pay the bill. Both Facecash and now Square Card Case have this problem, but maybe I have missed something.
Same as with credit cards: There'd be lots of fraud complaints. Square will realize there's a problem and depending on what their contracts look like they'll either charge them heavy fees and/or fine them to fund having to deal with the fraud, or cut them off.
Credit cards has this exact same problem. Physical control of the card pretty much gives you free reign to pay for stuff - most shop staff can't even be bothered to look at the signature or ensure the name has any chance of being yours.
> How does the system handle the common use-case where you give a third party (wife,friend,kid,..) the money to go and pay the bill.
The article states the current app already allows you to press a button to pay, so presumably you just forgo the convenience and make them press the button if their face doesn't match up.
And/or add a way of adding additional authorized people whose images will show up.
I am the cofounder of a startup that builds an iOS/iPod/iPad POS Ambur, and it's absolutely astonishing to me to see people claim Square is doing anything useful for merchants. Their software is far too simplistic for anyone running more than a very basic coffee shop with tech savvy customers to use. Even something as simple as most customers demand paper receipts, and Square's functionality is taking basic orders, o…
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Out of curiosity, where are you getting this info? From a cursory look, I was under the impression that they would need a license in every state that they'd do business in.
It's all public information. Square is exempt from the California Money Transmission Act per FC § 1805(d) (see http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=fin... ), since it's actually JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. that is moving your money. Square does not have a license. http://www.dfi.ca.gov/directory/mt.asp And Square has no plans to get one as of last month. http://www.dfi.ca.gov/publications/summaries/…
Would it not be possible for them to partner in the same fashion to do direct debit?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If a restaurant's going to go to all the trouble to install a system like this and set it up so that my phone can pay them, why couldn't I just order on the phone? Then I wouldn't have to stand in line at all, and they won't have wasted their time if it turns out that I want something else instead of what I usually get. Because a smooth face to face interaction is much more pleasant than ordering via an online appl…
Ordering a saved pizza order that we order frequently at Papa John's is incredibly easy -- certainly way easier than telling the order to someone. I suppose it's possible that coffee is different in some non-obvious way, but I'm not sure how.
Let's also not forget that Square is presumably not just targeting coffee shops and restaurants with this. You can take a sweater to the register and pay with card case.
I love Square, and they are a classic disruptor. They started slow, at the low end, and created their own blue ocean before starting to chew at the heels of the entrenched incumbents in the payment ecosystem. That being said, the payment ecosystem is a pretty messed up place, even though the ugliness is all pretty much abstracted from the customer. The interchange fees charged to the merchants at times rival their ma…
And if the customers were the ones footing the bill for the check-out process, it might have a market.
Until gives the merchants a financial reason to switch, they will keep doing things the way they've been doing things.