Hasta La Gadget!

Square just announced a new product meant to replace traditional point-of-service systems: the aptly named Square Stand. The hardware turns an iPad (2 or 3; support for the Lightning connector is coming later this year) into an all-in-one POS with an integrated card reader that accepts cash, plastic and Square Wallet payments. Available for pre-order today, the stand will set business owners back a rather steep $299, but the sleek design has a decidedly smaller footprint than the cash registers of yore, and it offers merchants real-time analytics for tracking sales via the Square Register app. Of course, if you want the full retail setup, you’ll still have to spring for Square’s receipt printer, barcode scanner and cash drawer.

Though the Square Stand won’t be available until July 8th, several merchants throughout the country, including Cafe Grumpy in New York City and Morelli’s Ice Cream in Atlanta, will be operating the device starting tomorrow. And given Square’s partnership with Starbucks, we wouldn’t be surprised if the system soon shows up at the coffee chain as well.

Filed under: Software, Apple

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Source: Square

Google has scrapped plans to launch a physical Google Wallet credit card at Google IO next week, it’s reported, focusing instead on the digital wallet and NFC functionality baked into Android smartphones. The company had intended to reveal the credit card – which was to be black with a rainbow “W”, so AllThingsD reports – at its annual developer event, but wonky run-throughs and concerns from management that the scheme was insufficiently futuristic saw it knocked from the schedule.

In fact, Google CEO Larry Page is said to be responsible for killing off the card plans, something he’s believed to have been skeptical about for some time. Page “felt it did not press forward innovation as payments startups like Square have done” AllThingsD’s sources claim.

The demise of the Google Wallet credit card hasn’t just shaken up Google IO next week, but staffing within the company. Head of Google Wallet Osama Bedier was confirmed to have left the company yesterday, “pushed out” it’s said in favor of shifting the division into the ads and commerce team. Sridhar Ramaswarmy is now directly in charge of Wallet.

Although the physical card won’t see the light of day, for a while if ever, that’s not to say Google Wallet is going anywhere. The system will be updated with new rewards, offers, and loyalty points, it’s said, with more merchants coming on-board to accept the NFC payments. What won’t be happening any time soon is integration with Google Now, though, with the teams described as “siloed” in a way which has prevented data sharing.

Google had supposedly gone so far as to bake physical card support into the new Google Wallet app, and prototypes of the cards had already been produced. As per a usual card, they included a magnetic stripe and raised numbers; despite suggestions that Google would launch its own bank, the actual project was to partner with existing banks, and source behavioral data around shopping patterns through third-parties, rather than directly from Visa and MasterCard.

Google Wallet physical card plans reportedly axed last-minute by CEO Page is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

SumUp, one of the many European mobile card reader startups targeting small businesses — and taking advantage of Square’s continued absence to acquire users and build out a business — has taken another step designed to expand its reach by announcing a partnership with Revel Systems, a maker of iPad POS software.

Revel Systems provides iPad-based tills to more than 400 chain stores and restaurants throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia and Saudi Arabia but it’s aiming to expand into Europe, hence the tie-up with SumUp. After launching last August, SumUp has now rolled out to 10 European markets.

Revel Systems will be using SumUp’s API, which it made available in fall last year, to process debit and credit card and cash payments in Europe. In other markets the company uses payment gateway USAePay, and says it can also integrate directly into Mercury Payment Systems.

In Europe the SumUp mobile payments app will come pre-loaded on Revel Systems tills and users will also get SumUp’s black card reader — which plugs into the iPad to take card payments. The partnership won’t bear instant fruit for SumUp on the customer acquisition front but as and when Revel Systems builds up its customer base in the region, SumUp will also make gains.

Commenting on the tie-up in a statement, John Doe, CEO of Revel Systems, said it chose to partner with SumUp to offer flexibility to its retail customers — but did not specify what it offered over and above other European mobile payments startups such as iZettle and Rocket Internet’s Payleven.

“SumUp’s technology is aligned with ours because it’s lightweight, secure, and speedy. SumUp is a natural partner for us,” he said. “We’re always looking to forge new partnerships with those businesses that aim to enhance the overall customer experience. Our users are also certain to appreciate the easy SumUp sign-up process and pay-as-you-go billing. We’re looking forward to working with SumUp as we expand to new markets.”

As with the myriad mobile payments players targeting small businesses, SumUp does not charge a monthly fee to businesses using its system but rather takes a 2.75% per card reader transaction charge. SumUp accepts Visa, Mastercard and recently added support for Amex in the majority of its markets.

The Revel Systems tie-up is not SumUp’s first b2b partnership aimed at building out its business. The company has previously announced partnerships with German taxi hailing app Taxi.de and an odd job software platform provider.

Amazon is working on an anonymous mobile payments system, a new patent filing has revealed, using a Western Union style process of temporary identifiers which allows transactions without handing over your name, email address, or other personal details. The PayPal alternative uses an intermediary payments provider with which each individual in the deal is registered, but rather than sending money to a user’s email address, a special code is generated which can later be redeemed.

The patent, filed back in 2009, argues that many users prefer not to give out personally-identifiable details as a way of avoiding potential data theft or spamming. In contrast, Amazon’s system uses a series of temporary tokens that can be exchanged, either with the sender triggering the payment or the recipient requesting it, but with no exchange of personal information.

“It is commonplace for entities to conduct an electronic payment to complete a transaction. In a typical transaction, information about each party is typically exchanged to facilitate the electronic transaction. Some of this information may be personal or private information that a person may not desire to share with a stranger. For example, a customer may have to provide their address and telephone number during execution of an electronic payment” Amazon patent

In practice, if you had to give a friend a payment of $20, you could send a text message to Amazon’s server with the text “PAY 20″. A return message would have a specially created code, tied to your account, which – when your friend texted it to Amazon from their phone – would credit their account with the appropriate amount. Amazon suggests that the code could contain part of the recipient’s phone number: not enough to identify them, but enough to ensure that it would be unlikely that someone else could use the code from their own phone.

More complex versions of the system, meanwhile, would allow limitations to be placed on the temporary codes. For instance, Amazon describes how they could be set with expiration dates, so that recipients would have to use them before a certain periods; alternatively, a single code could be valid for multiple redemptions (potentially a limited number) such as to operate as an anonymous payment plan. Something other than money could be exchanged, too; Amazon suggests tokens, download credit, or other virtual currency.

Of course, any such system would require the intermediary infrastructure be set up, and enabled for accepting payments in multiple currencies across multiple locations. Amazon already has such a system, given its retail presence across the world, while its mobile ambitions have already been revealed in the form of the Kindle Fire range and the upcoming near-200 country expansion of the Amazon Appstore.

Amazon anonymous mobile payments system revealed in new patent is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Square has launched Business in a Box, a hardware bundle targeting small businesses looking to ditch their existing payments provider, and instead take up with the Square Register in a simple to deploy package. The $299 bundle includes a pair of Square Readers and a secure iPad stand to turn the tablet into a point-of-sale machine, as well as an iPad controlled cash drawer for those customers who refuse to swipe like Square wishes they would.

A second version of the bundle, priced at $599, throws in a Star Micronics thermal printer, which can be used to give physical receipts. However, the Square Register app itself can email receipts if people want to do away with paper. The only actual Square product in the bundles is the Reader dongle itself, which plugs into the headphone socket on your iPad or iPhone; the iPad stand is Heckler Design’s WindFall, while the cash drawer is the APG Vasario 1616.

Since the system is modular, there’s plenty of flexibility as to how you set it up. All of the components can be left out on the countertop, or hidden mostly away, so that only the iPad itself is visible to customers. Since there are two Readers included, you can also go mobile with a second device, roaming the aisles in search of quavering customers.

The bundle is the latest push by Square to promote its mobile payments system, and follows a deal with Verizon last month and a long-term agreement with Starbucks which will see it replace the coffee company’s existing payments provider. Beyond the $299 kit price, the only ongoing charge is the 2.75-percent cut of each transaction that Square takes.

[via TIME]

Square “Business in a Box” ousts old payment providers with $299 bundle is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.