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Europe's Square

izettle.com

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Re: Europe's Square

#31

Post by jermaink »

tomp wrote: post #20
jermaink wrote: post #18

Economically, I can understand that people start to copy concepts and transfer good ideas into their homecountry. That´s nothing new - you can find that across human history and it was often connected to progress. Basically, copycats act like spice merchants in late centuries. They scout for some new spices and try to find out if they can match or create demand in other regions of the world. However, what I really di…

What do you mean? iSettle's and Square's websites look just as much alike as any recent startups'...

Honestly, I tend to say that the website clearly shows a lot (!) of elements and interactions that are derived from Square. And it does not look like a co-existent happenstance.

Re: Europe's Square

#32

Post by rmc »

lachyg wrote: post #6

One thing that may not be too familiar to the Americans, but this looks a lot sturdier (read:larger) because it isn't a swiper like Square. It is a chip reader, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN

Heads up, If you're an American going to Europe, regular swipe only credit cards won't work as often here. Nearly all point-of-sale credit card machines require chip & pin. Or you'll wind up like some tourists in my local supermarket unable to use their credit card.

Re: Europe's Square

#33

Post by altrego99 »

hopeless wrote: post #15

What's all this "sign with your finger" nonsense? With Chip & PIN cards (i.e., all our modern credit cards) you should just need the chip & PIN. Signatures are only a backup authentication. Also, signing with anything other than a pen and paper is still a disastrous user experience (see every courier's PDA system ever built)

Even signing with pen and paper is a baggage we're carrying with hardly any guarantee of identification, and has challenges like your signature being too simple or changing over time. This is utterly rubbish and should be made obsolete in the digital age, IMHO.

Where are the finger print scanners or iris scanners when we need them?

Re: Europe's Square

#34

Post by objclxt »

aes256 wrote: post #19
yesbabyyes wrote: post #17

Swede here -- the company is Swedish and I have used it on several occasions, as a payer. It works great. As others have mentioned, it reads the chip, and is sturdy. Not using PIN though, you sign the receipt with your finger, which works really well. You can also get the receipt via email. Edit: they definitely support VISA.

Lack of Chip and PIN support is going to be a major turn-off in much of the European market...

Absolutely - what's not clear at all is where the liability lies. In the UK at least, and I assume the rest of Europe, if a retailer uses a PIN the liability for fraud rests with the card issuer.

But if the retailer lets the user sign instead the liability is with them: this is an incentive for retailers to accept and promote Chip/PIN over a signature.

iZettle read the chip (good), but then you sign for the goods (bad). It's not at all clear if that means liability for fraud now rests with the seller rather than the issuer. Their help page is very vague on the subject, and alludes to the fact card issuers won't allow PINs to be captured on mobile devices (this makes some sense, from a phishing perspective).

In fact, iZettle's help page has zero results when you search for 'fraud'. I think this is something they should address.

Coincidentally (shameless plug here), I blogged about this exact problem a month or so ago, bemoaning the lack of a good Chip & PIN solution. I'm not convinced iZettle is it...I've now written up some more concerns about fraud in a new post, here: http://cleveryou.net/post/23162180527/izettle-square-killer

Re: Europe's Square

#35

Post by buro9 »

hopeless wrote: post #15

What's all this "sign with your finger" nonsense? With Chip & PIN cards (i.e., all our modern credit cards) you should just need the chip & PIN. Signatures are only a backup authentication. Also, signing with anything other than a pen and paper is still a disastrous user experience (see every courier's PDA system ever built)

PIN keypads have to be secure... totally secure. Passing through the iPhone isn't security.

For them to include a PIN entry system, they would need to do so on the chip reader device itself (non-iPhone).

The keypads for PIN entry systems always hash the PIN before it leaves the keypad... no other software gets the PIN.

If you cannot offer secure PIN entry, then you cannot offer PIN entry.

You can still take a signature, but now the burden of responsibility changes. Fraud is covered by the merchants if you use signatures.

Re: Europe's Square

#36

Post by bede »

However successful this product becomes (which looks doubtful given its dependence upon signatures), its irritating generic web 2.0 startup name will prevent me from ever taking it seriously.

Re: Europe's Square

#37

Post by pja »

yesbabyyes wrote: post #17

Swede here -- the company is Swedish and I have used it on several occasions, as a payer. It works great. As others have mentioned, it reads the chip, and is sturdy. Not using PIN though, you sign the receipt with your finger, which works really well. You can also get the receipt via email. Edit: they definitely support VISA.

IIRC the rules on who carries the liability for fraudulent transactions differ between chip & pin and signature authenticated transactions. With a signature, all the liability is placed on the vendor for cardholder present transactions, whereas with chip & pin the liability is supposed to rest with the card issuer. The systems are set up so that if chip&pin transactions are not possible, they can fall back to signature authentication if the card settings permit it (and they all do, because to do otherwise would be a massive customer service failure).

So, if you're going to use this system, you will have to take the liability issues into account.

(The cynic within me suggests that even in the case where a fraudulent chip & pin transaction has occurred, merchant agreements probably do their utmost to shift liability to the vendor regardless though.)

Re: Europe's Square

#38

Post by [deleted] »

lachyg wrote: post #6

One thing that may not be too familiar to the Americans, but this looks a lot sturdier (read:larger) because it isn't a swiper like Square. It is a chip reader, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN

[deleted]

Re: Europe's Square

#39

Post by ErrantX »

rmc wrote: post #32
lachyg wrote: post #6

One thing that may not be too familiar to the Americans, but this looks a lot sturdier (read:larger) because it isn't a swiper like Square. It is a chip reader, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN

Heads up, If you're an American going to Europe, regular swipe only credit cards won't work as often here. Nearly all point-of-sale credit card machines require chip & pin. Or you'll wind up like some tourists in my local supermarket unable to use their credit card.

Whilst many places often refuse to swipe any more (which I suppose is their prerogative) it does actually work. If the chip/pin reader has the swipe slot at the top then it will work.

Tesco don't have the swipe slot, and they now train till staff to say they can't swipe cards. But it does work on the till itself (I know this because when a friend visited we made the poor till attendant try it :)).

EDIT: also, interestingly, it looks like this service only uses the chip feature, not the pin :)

Re: Europe's Square

#40

Post by sgt »

This will be perfect for my dad's art gallery. Fewer and fewer people bring cash a long so he loses out on sales that way. It's a very small art gallery and conventional payment terminals are too expensive to buy/hire.
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