Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, launched yesterday a new website to demonstrate his new concept, the “square”.
Basically, using their “square” and some software you’ll be able to turn your iPhone into a credit (or debit) card terminal, pretty much like what Apple already uses in some of its stores.
What is special about it it’s that it uses the iPhone jack plug to communicate with the device. Here is the square as described by its creator:
It is essentially a small magnetic reader that plugs into the headphone jack of an iPhone.
When a credit card (or a debit card) is swiped through the reader, it reads the data and converts it into an audio signal. The microphone picks up the audio, sends it through the processors and then is routed to Square’s software application on the iPhone.
From there the encrypted data is transmitted using either Wi-Fi (for iPod Touch) or a 3G Internet connection to a backend severs which in turn communicate with the payment networks to complete the transactions.
TechCrunch also managed to obtain a video demonstration :
Since a regular terminal can cost you as much as $900 this should really come handy to many merchants.
Pretty neat isn’t it ?
Hipster much? Really need to drink an espresso at the same time?
I love this site and read it daily. Please don’t take this the wrong way. It’s so extremely disappointing and irritating to see grammar and spelling mistakes in EVERY post from this site. Proofread much?
I agree, Jeff. I read the site daily as well, but there are grammatical problems (not just typos) in pretty much every entry. I’ve considered suggesting some English courses for contributing writers.
The device is too small and too easy to lose, IMHO. Not to mention the way they were handling the iPhone with no case, I was waiting for someone to drop it. This device has to also fit a case covered iPhone. Could a slightly larger card reader be used along with a biometric scanner to hasten the process? The transaction took longer than it would at a standard regsiter. Overall, great concept!
That is not an iPhone, tt is an iPod touch in the ad and in the video. This is easily noticeable since (1) the headphone jack is on the bottom, and (2) because there is no silver speaker slit on the top of the device as you would find on the iPhone for calls.
Ok, the guy’s a techie. He co-founded TWITTER. So WHY is he using the freekin’ headphone jack instead of the dock connector and the Apple-provided 3rd-party hardware API?! As you can see in the video, the thing is a pretty ugly piece of hardware that rotates in the headphone jack… Why not make it a slick “chin” style device that plugs into the dock connector and goes all the way across the bottom – much more stable and professional-looking. Not to mention that you can have good-looking uniformity between iPhones and iPod Touches (as opposed to having a very sketchy-looking device sticking out of the top or bottom of your iDevice, ready to inspire hesitation in the mind of every customer who’s card you skim). Hopefully this is just a concept, and the final implementation will have MUCH more polish.
Geez, guys.These folks have created something terrific, and it will be offered for buck including the dongle. Love to buy stock in the company. Nice work, Square dudes!