Jack Squares up to payments industry

I started tracking Jack Dorsey’s Square venture during my stint as Retail Systems Editor and, since taking over at FStech, have stepped up my interest (for obvious reasons!)

The Twitter co-founder’s company is upping its bid to ‘revolutionise’ the payments sector with Square Register and Card Case. The Square Register app for iPad replaces cash registers with “a beautiful, full featured, touch-enabled PoS and checkout solution.” It enables businesses to easily manage the items they sell, check daily transactions, update pricing, automate checkout, generate digital receipts, and maintain virtual storefronts so customers can discover and explore new offerings when they’re in the neighborhood. Card Case allows iPhone and Android users to explore local businesses, view menus, track and store digital receipts and open digital tabs to make instant purchases on their phones. Further info here.

Dorsey has certainly got the payments ‘establishment’ rattled. VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron recently wrote an open letter, warning of a serious security threat with Square’s card reader and calling on the company to recall its devices. “In less than an hour, any reasonably skilled programmer can write an application that will “skim” - or steal - a consumer’s financial and personal information right off the card utilising an easily obtained Square card reader. How do we know? We did it. Tested on sample Square card readers with our own personal credit cards, we wrote an application in less than an hour that did exactly this,” Bergeron stated.

“The issue is that Square’s hardware is poorly constructed and lacks all ability to encrypt consumers’ data, creating a window for criminals to turn the device into a skimming machine in a matter of minutes,” he added.

Security issues aside, Dorsey’s company has undeniable momentum right now. As Brett King, author of  BANK 2.0 and founder of Movenbank, recently tweeted: “What does it say about bank innovation when @Square launches Cardcase with 50 partners, and @Visa launches e-Wallet with 14 partners?”

Square is aiming to revolutionise the behemouth that is the payments industry, an industry that, let’s be honest, has had things its own way for too long. Will it succeed? Unlikely. It will be hard to make much of a mark, but Dorsey has set the ball rolling and that’s what really counts.