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Smart cards have enabled [signing communications off the main CPU] for at least a dozen years and counting. They also happen to cost four times less than current USB sticks.

Even when you include the cost of a smart card reader that connects to one of the ports on the outside of a smartphone, tablet, or laptop computer? On my laptop, counterclockwise from top left, these are power, HDMI, USB, microSD, audio, USB, and USB. Last I checked, Square was charging $35 for a smart card reader that connects to a TRRS audio port, and I imagine that Square's might support only EMV application, not TLS application. If a consumer product computing device does have an ID-000 sized smart card slot, it's probably intended solely for authenticating to a cellular carrier, not to a particular website. Replace it with the card containing your bank's TLS certificate, and you no longer have Internet access through your device's cellular radio.

As you've probably guessed: I have no experience with ISO/IEC 7816 smart cards other than using the EMV chip on my credit card at merchants and inserting a SIM into a phone.

[Neighbor kid] gets one of those Square card readers and plugs ut into his iPhone.

That won't work. Square's TOS states: "You represent and warrant to us that: (a) you are at least eighteen (18) years of age". This means the only Square thing a child can buy for an iPhone is a Final Fantasy game.

If they public's opinion doesn't sway I'd expect to see the headphone jack back on the iPhone by the time the iPhone 9 comes out.

It just struck me that this is not just about headphones, but also things like the Square reader that plugs into the headphone jack*. I'm sure Square would be thrilled to have re-design their hardware to incorporate it wirelessly (and what does that do to security of said devices?)

They have been "thrilled" long before your brain got to "thinking" about it. https://squareup.com/townsquare/go-wireless-with-the-new-square-reader-and-your-iphone-7

Square?

A cash register is likely going to be some sort of PC

Funny enough, I see these more than anything lately.

Square's mag-stripe card reader is obsolete - it can't read chip & PIN cards, or contactless.

I have a Square card reader that does chip & PIN using the headphone jack: https://squareup.com/au/reader

Not to mention the various devices designed to encode or decode data over that port.

Square being the first thing to come to mind.

So either they hook up through the analog adapter or they design a Lightning version. Probably in testing now.

Not to mention the various devices designed to encode or decode data over that port.

Square being the first thing to come to mind.

Square already released a new reader that works over bluetooth: https://squareup.com/help/us/e...

Square already has a new reader that works over bluetooth: https://squareup.com/help/us/e...

The latest Square connects using Bluetooth, so there's that.

But if you read that page, you'll discover that it still requires the headphone jack for swiping cards. So maybe they will just focus on Android.

why would you do this? to artificially inflate battery life or make it slimmer, not worth it, this is a stupid move.

Mainly to annoy Square users.

https://squareup.com/help/us/e...

It is very unlikely that the cash registers are connected to the internet. They may be connected to the same set of servers that you can access from your phone, but that does not make them "connected to the internet".

It's here man, and they're popping up all over the place. They are definitely connected to the internet.

No, it's because the credit card company takes a cut of card transactions

I have a hard time with that. An off-the-shelf solution like Square charges 2.75% without negotiation. I'd think a cabbie would rather collect 97.25% of the bill than 100% of nothing.

Just found this -- not so bad for Square, it seems: https://squareup.com/emv

If I want to buy an air compressor off the trading post, I'm going to rock up with cash because the guy selling it wont have an EFTPOS machine.

I don't know about trading posts, but I know at craft fairs and conventions it's becoming common for sellers to have a small credit card reader that connects to their phone. I use a Square Reader to sell at craft fairs and conventions. Sure, I have to pay a fee for each transaction, but it's worth it to sell to people that have already spent all their cash, or who didn't bring cash because they were dragged along by friends/family and didn't expect to see anything they'd actually want to buy, or that didn't expect to make such a large transaction. Basically I have a choice between paying the fee or not making a sale to these people; so I'm fine with taking the fee. It's not sustainable to have a profit margin so small that merchant fees are going to kill me, so I don't do that.

And really despite the fee, I prefer to take credit cards. I can't pay any of my bills with cash (and even before I could pay them with credit cards, that was the case). So I have to drive to the bank (costing gas money), during hours it is open, and deposit the cash. Being a one-car family, and with the bank being open pretty much only when my husband is at work, and my bank being very out-of-the-way, it's a total pain. Credit card transactions, on the other hand, go directly into my bank account.

If you're a small shop, you will not be able to deal with credit cards except through intermediate handlers, such as PayPal. And most of them have massive up-front fees that you cannot afford.

Well, technically, I suppose that statement may still be true, but there is at least one very prominent "intermediate handler" that does not charge any up-front fees; in fact, they give away the hardware for free: I'm talking about Square.

They are, however, mainly helpful offline, because I believe their fees for non-in-person transactions are considerably higher than the 2.7% or whatever they charge when you actually swipe a card. Though they do have an online marketplace.

Either way, it's definitely good to see a serious (potential) competitor to PayPal.

Dan Aris

This shouldn't be a big surprise...the flat rate plan was clearly a loss-leader meant to gain marketshare.

Most of the fee you pay to companies like Square doesn't go to them. It goes towards the "Interchange Fee" charged by Visa, MasterCard, and AMEX. These interchange fees vary based on card type (for example, fees are higher on "reward cards"...that's what funds the "reward"), and transaction type ("card not present", for example, has a higher rate). Check over the interchange fees for Visa and MasterCard, and you'll see that Square doesn't have a lot of room to move below 2.75% and still make money.

The three big players in this "mobile payments" space are Paypal Here (2.7%), Intuit's GoPayment (2.75% flat, or $12.95/M + 1.75%) or, the aforementioned Square (2.75%). At the moment, if you're swiping more than $1295/M, Intuit's $12.95+1.75% would be the best choice...unclear though, how long that plan will be around since it's a loss-leader as well.

The market that's more curious to me is the "card not present" market...payment processors for websites. Stripe seems to be the darling of the Slashdot crowd, but their pricing is horrible. They offer 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, and won't offer to discount it until you're doing $1M+ per year. Contrast with Paypal's Payment Pro which drops down first to 2.5%+$0.30 once you hit $3k/month, then down to 2.2%+$0.30 once you hit $10k/month. Stripe has a few features that PPP doesn't, but they would need to be real important to you to pay that much more.

Drug Deal!

Except Drug Dealers don't keep Bank Accounts. Its a cash and you are carrying business.

This requires you to give Square Your debit card info, and makes your recipient give you THEIR bank details.
Seriously, the NSA couldn't have dreamed up a move invasive scheme. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Left unsaid in the linked article, (and also the Square website) is how square is going to monetize this, other than by
*cough* losing one out of a hundred payments. They claim the service is free. FAQ Here to both parties. So, how do they finance that, other than getting a piece of the debit card fee? (Senders have to use a Debit card).

One wonders just how much the debit card fee is jacked up to allow Square to assume the risk for this type of service, and handle the deluge of complaints and lost payments claims. And how many will be suckered into handing over their bank info to a 419 email purportedly from Square.

World Plus Dog is rushing to mobile payments, but I'm not so sure this is well thought out.

I hope they replaced their stupid headphone jack with a headset jack. It is SO annoying to have to type in credit cards manually using Square's Credit Card Reader (not to mention the higher fee).

I guess you haven't seen these:
https://squareup.com/register/hardware

I think tablets will replace most desktops/laptops in 20 years.

Exactly. All you need to process credit cards is an iPhone/Android phone and and adapter from Square. Flat percentage on all purchases, so you don't have to worry about small purchases getting consumed by transaction charges.

What people like about it is that they don't have to pay the credit card companies their 4% of the sales. Instead 4square is only about 2% so small business gets to keep more of their money.

I believe you are thinking of Square which performs credit card payments, however the article is about Four Square which is some social restaurant service I had not heard of until this article. I agree that Square is immensely popular, even here in Alaska.

I used to subscribe to the Baffler, but issues came out less and less often, then stopped completely. Now they're back. They're one of the few publications still publishing serious essays.

That said, this essay is more about Stallman vs. O'Reilly. That's a modestly interesting subject, but has little to do with government. But what if government were "more connected"? What would it look like?

Banks used to be very disconnected internally. You could have a checking account, a savings account, a credit card, and a mortgage, and the different departments of the bank didn't know about the other accounts. Today, banks consolidate your "total relationship with the bank" into one online portal, and all the accounts can interconnect.

Suppose government did that. Federal and state income taxes, property taxes, parking fines, traffic tickets, bridge tolls, child support, welfare, social security, and Medicare, all on one convenient monthly statement. That's almost a no-brainer with today's technology. Some countries do that now; Sweden, for one.

Then integrate employment - the employer side verifies that you're in the system, and takes care of taxes, immigration status, and medical insurance premiums. Less paperwork for everybody. For casual employment, a Square reader and a smartphone app handles the paperwork.

That's "connected government". Is that what you want?

30 seconds' worth of searching produced:

Square

Go Payment

Payware Mobile

ROAMpay

That would be very...un-Apple-like. They currently make money on every device legitimately sold by 3rd party OEMs (iHome, JBL) by requiring an NDA and licensing agreement through their MFi program. I found and interesting read here about the reasoning behind the Square CC reader using the audio port. They cite several valid reasons but one that sticks out in a big way is basically it costs Square US $1 to manufacture the device but it would have cost them $4-$8 per device in licensing if they had gone with the 30 pin dock connector.

Hmm, via Square pretty much any Joe off the street with a smartphone can take credit cards and pay a 2.75% transaction fee. So I could theoretically set up a restaurant in my kitchen. order dinner from myself, pay via my Visa card which offers 5% back on restaurants and make a small profit.

BitCoin's fees seem unreasonable, not to mention I still see no reason to trust the "interesting, yet misguided currency which just won't die."

a tablet that can be on a charger AND support a credit/debit card reader at the same time

Square, which uses the microphone / headphone socket. (Although, I note sadly, it's US-only at the moment.)

Now why on earth would I want my perfectly fine android tablet look like a POS?

Of course you'd want to make it look like a point of sale terminal if you're going to accept payments using it.

Paypal finally comes in

Square up http://www.squareup.com/

Intuit Go Payment http://intuit-gopayment.com/

Any others anyone knows about? There are those that don't have a Cc swiper on it but looking for a list of ones that give free swipers.

Since you probably don't work in this space, I'll drop you a hint: https://squareup.com/

If that's true, why can I buy 100,000 battery cradles, camera add ons, cases, credit card readers [...]

Battery Cradles? Maybe it's because Android phones usually have removable batteries? Camera Add-Ons? Because Apple made crappy cameras up until the iPhone 4S? Credit Card Readers? Here's one that's available for both.

https://squareup.com/

Unfortunately, the state of electronic money in the US is rather sad.

First of all according to the survey by the Census Bureau 7.7% of US households do not have a bank account at all! Up to 25% of the population lives paycheck-to-paycheck, utilizing the services of Pawn Shops, non-bank check-cashing services, or payday loans (legal loan sharks).

Cash is accepted virtually everywhere. Paper Checks are also widely accepted, although are considered a bit risky by the merchants, more because of the likelihood of insufficient funds (and not being ale to track down the person if that happens) than fraud. If you do have insufficient funds, you will likely be hit by at least $100 in fees. ($25 from the merchant and $25 dollars from the bank for first presentation of the check, and both fees again when merchant

Credit Cards and Debt Cards are widely accepted, but not universally. If fraud occurs the merchant eats the loss, pretty much without exception. Merchants are also weary of people disputing the charges with their card company. If that occurs the credit card company tends to side with the consumer unless the merchant can show that the transaction was actually completed.

Online bill payment at the company's site is common for large companies, but smaller companies may not offer it, or may charge a fee to pay online. Except for the largest companies, if you pay online the payment is not counted as being payed when you finished entering your details, but only once the transaction is completed, so paying online at the due day may not qualify as paying on-time, (although oddly if you give them the same credit card information over the phone, they almost always count that as on-time.)

Wire transfer services are expensive. Fees of $20 or more to send a wire Transfer domestically are very common.
At my credit union, receiving a wire transfer is a $5 fee, and I belive similar fees are also common.

The wire transfer system thus is not often used. Instead the ACH system is used. Most but not all employers offer direct deposit services, which use ACH to electronically post money into your account. Banks almost never charge a fee for that, but that is pretty much the only case in which consumers receive money via ACH. The more common use is to electronically present paper checks, for online bill payment via a bank, or for direct debit (where you authorize a company to directly charge your bank account.) There are no fees for the customer for those.

Online Bill payment through a bank does exist. However it does not work well. Payment is electronic (via ACH) only if your bank and the company have worked together to set that up. If not, when you use online bill payment the bank (or the company they contracted to provide the bill payment service) physically prints a paper check and mails it.

Many but not all companies with regular recurring bills offer a direct debit service (via ACH, as mentioned above), and indeed it is possible to pay nearly all your bills that way, except for one-off bills and perhaps a small number of recurring bills where the company does not offer direct debit.

Having integration between the bank and the company, such that you can view your bill electronically via the bank, and then pay the actual bill (useful for variable bills) is possible, but many banks and companies don't offer this. Even if both the bank and the company offer that, it may still not work, since there is no standard mechanism, so unless your bank (or its contractor) have specifically worked with the company to set up this integration, it will not happen.

For person to person electronic transfer of money there are few choices other than services like PayPal, or very recently a few services (such as Square) have started allowed individuals to accept credit cards.

Otherwise the only options for person-to-person payments is checks, or cash.

Have tried Square?

They are scared:

https://squareup.com/

A twitter co-founder seeks to "democratize" credit card processing. They must feel threatened.

https://squareup.com/ Another way for individuals to take credit cards.

• Card numbers, magnetic stripe data, or security codes are not stored on Square client devices.
• Applications developed in-house are subject to strict quality testing and security review. Web development follows industry-standard secure coding guidelines, such as those recommended by OWASP.
• Card-processing applications adhere to the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), Level 1.

Throw in one of these, and you're looking at truly ridiculous amounts of pain if you lose your phone.

Nope. It is already in wide use. https://squareup.com/

There certainly are apps that use it with Apple's blessings. Square is the obvious and rather cool one (works on the iPod, iPad, and some 'droids, too).

The credit card reader Square does this and it has existed for about a year.

https://squareup.com/

At MacWorld 2010 I saw http://squareup.com/ that uses a little dongle to plug into your smartphone to convert the magnetic stripe to an audio-signal to get the card info which combines with their backend to do the processing. Their cut was something like 3% of the transaction, with no setup fees. Their target market seems to mostly be small business who could not get a better rate from the big fulfillment places, but also the craigslist junkies and personal transaction market.

I think they are in "release" only for the iPad just now.

But, there's an app for that!

Depending on whether or not square allows its service to be used by websites in addition to the physical swipe of the card, then Square could be going right for PayPal's jugular. Of course there are other variables too - sign up process, fees, etc.