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The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

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Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#51

Post by thinkcomp »

dpark wrote: post #45
thinkcomp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. This is what an investment from Visa looks like with really good design. Not everyone was trying to get both sides to adopt new hardware, either. As long as Square uses cards for funding, it will be robbing the poor to pay the rich just like every other card company. To me, "disruptive" in the payments world means no cards, period.

And why exactly do you imagine that Square couldn't debit directly from a checking account in the future (as the article mentioned)?

Because they don't have any money transmitter licenses and it will take them a few years to get them.

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#52

Post by akavi »

thinkcomp wrote: post #42
gojomo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it scale to Wal-mart? Even with a dozen people with the same name in the store, a cashier can quickly pick a matching face: everyone is good at that (except for prosopagnosics). And that's without assuming Wal-mart adds any extra hardware that could narrow the position of handhelds to individual registers.

That's a pretty long scroll box to find the person in the first place. Or an added step as you key in the first few letters of the person's name. At large retailers or QSR chains that put a premium on fast checkout, neither option will fly. I obviously appreciate the simplicity of paying with your face.

A pretty obvious next step would be to pair this with facial recognition.

That'd cut down the search space dramatically.

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#53

Post by thinkcomp »

reissbaker wrote: post #49
thinkcomp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. This is what an investment from Visa looks like with really good design. Not everyone was trying to get both sides to adopt new hardware, either. As long as Square uses cards for funding, it will be robbing the poor to pay the rich just like every other card company. To me, "disruptive" in the payments world means no cards, period.

What were the non-hardware non-card payment methods attempted? I'm familiar with NFC, and somewhat intimately familiar with Square and its card-based rivals, but the only alternatives I know of are those pay-through-your-carrier attempts that are an even bigger can of worms than a card company. Were there others? To reference your Visa point (which I suspect wasn't serious), Square was card-based long before the Visa…

Starbucks (for payments) and the airlines (for boarding passes) have done pretty well with barcode scanners. It requires hardware only on the merchant side than most merchants already have in one form or another.

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#54

Post by gojomo »

sausagefeet wrote: post #48
gojomo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it scale to Wal-mart? Even with a dozen people with the same name in the store, a cashier can quickly pick a matching face: everyone is good at that (except for prosopagnosics). And that's without assuming Wal-mart adds any extra hardware that could narrow the position of handhelds to individual registers.

I wonder how they'll keep people from putting products on someone else's tab.

As noted in the article and alluded to in my comment, the cashier visually verifies that the person requesting the charge matches the photo that appears on their screen. That's a whole lot better than the pretend 'signature verification' purporting to deter other kinds of card misuse.

Identical twins and celebrity lookalikes may still present problems.

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#55

Post by dpark »

Figs wrote: post #28

> 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 application. "Half-caff mocha, large, with extra whip cream" vs "open web site, look for mocha, select size, special request... extra whip cream, agree to pay..., submit". That's a crappy experience. The online order only makes sense if the face-to-face experience sucks worse, which shouldn't be the case.

Also because this system doesn't require you to get out your phone every time. Just once, and then it works transparently.

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#56

Post by jarek »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #14

Hmm, perhaps I need to find the time to become an Apple Developer and sign the NDA, for much the same reason that folks who want to write screenplays move to Hollywood: To find out what the industry is going to do, years in advance. Geofencing is a big deal and I first heard of it... today. How long have iOS devs known? Since WWDC?

I'm pretty sure everyone that reads Engadget only on Big Apple Days, let alone more invested users, have known. I haven't coded a line of obj c in my life and I've known about it for a couple of months.

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#57

Post by reissbaker »

Figs wrote: post #28

> 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
Well, the point of Square is that there isn't much to install. Download the app, they mail you a reader for free (or you could pick one up at the nearest Apple store for $10 if you can't wait), and you're ready to start taking payments immediately. Setting up Square is simpler than setting up a traditional merchant account to take credit cards, and then you get these niceties on top, too.

But I'll bet that tap-to-order is on its way.

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#58

Post by dpark »

thinkcomp wrote: post #51
dpark wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why exactly do you imagine that Square couldn't debit directly from a checking account in the future (as the article mentioned)?

Because they don't have any money transmitter licenses and it will take them a few years to get them.

Hence the phrase "in the future". There's no way that Square doesn't see this obvious step. It's probably already in progress.

Also I'm guessing that what Square currently does already requires a money transmitter license, since transmitting money is exactly what they do.

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#59

Post by [deleted] »

thinkcomp wrote: post #53
reissbaker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the non-hardware non-card payment methods attempted? I'm familiar with NFC, and somewhat intimately familiar with Square and its card-based rivals, but the only alternatives I know of are those pay-through-your-carrier attempts that are an even bigger can of worms than a card company. Were there others? To reference your Visa point (which I suspect wasn't serious), Square was card-based long before the Visa…

Starbucks (for payments) and the airlines (for boarding passes) have done pretty well with barcode scanners. It requires hardware only on the merchant side than most merchants already have in one form or another.

[deleted]

Re: The End of the Credit Card? New Square app: Card Case

#60

Post by reissbaker »

thinkcomp wrote: post #53
reissbaker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the non-hardware non-card payment methods attempted? I'm familiar with NFC, and somewhat intimately familiar with Square and its card-based rivals, but the only alternatives I know of are those pay-through-your-carrier attempts that are an even bigger can of worms than a card company. Were there others? To reference your Visa point (which I suspect wasn't serious), Square was card-based long before the Visa…

Starbucks (for payments) and the airlines (for boarding passes) have done pretty well with barcode scanners. It requires hardware only on the merchant side than most merchants already have in one form or another.

Er. But unless you've given Starbucks direct access to your bank account, those are fundamentally card-based too.
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