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

Square collects a lot of store info by virtue of its payment business, so you’d think it would be great at recommending where to shop. And you may soon be right, according to the company’s Ajit Varma. While he doesn’t have a schedule, he tells The Verge that Square will eventually customize its directory to suggest hot or newly opened stores based on our spending habits. Varma even believes that his company could beat Foursquare in the local recommendations field, and it’s easy to see why when Square knows that we’re willing to buy, not just that we’ve entered a given store. Of course, this is all contingent on both a ubiquitous Square presence and consumerist intentions. Foursquare is entirely willing to point us to both free landmarks as well as stores without Square readers, so it’s doubtful that the two services will ever completely overlap.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet

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Source: The Verge

The FTC held a workshop on mobile payments last year, and it’s now followed that up with a full report that raises a few concerns and offers some recommendations for the industry. Those include the expected issues of privacy and security, which the FTC encourages companies to step up their efforts on, as well as the issue of billing disputes. On that latter front, the FTC draws attention to one problem in particular known as “cramming,” in which companies or individuals place fraudulent charges on a user’s cellphone bill. As the FTC notes in the report, “there are no federal statutory protections governing consumer disputes about fraudulent or unauthorized charges placed on mobile carrier bills,” and it further adds in a blog post that “the way mobile carrier billing works makes this a challenging problem to solve.” It goes on to outline some consumer protection measures it says all carriers should adopt, and notes that it will further address the issue at a roundtable on May 8th. You can find the full report at the source link.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: FTC report (PDF), FTC, FTC Business Center Blog

You may not be very familiar with mFoundry’s name, but you’ll probably know its work if you’re reading this site: it’s part of a deal with MasterCard for NFC-based mobile payments, powers many banking apps and wrote the earliest mobile app code for Starbucks. As such, it’s no small deal that payment giant FIS just bought full control of mFoundry for $120 million. FIS isn’t shy about its aims and sees mFoundry as the ticket to covering a mobile banking space that’s growing quicker than other fields. Not that mFoundry will necessarily feel like a pawn — its audience potentially grows to the 14,000 banks that FIS has for customers. We’ll just need to wait until after the deal closes later in the current quarter to see what the union will bring.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile

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Source: TechCrunch

It wasn’t too much of a surprise to see Starbucks begin accepting Square payments at many of its coffee shops last year, but the company’s latest expansion of that partnership is a bit more unexpected. It’s announced today that it has started selling Square card readers at some 7,000 locations across the US, letting customers pick up a means to accept credit card payments along with their beverage of choice. That’s only the latest retail deal for Square following partnerships with Apple, Walmart, Best Buy and others, and as with those the readers themselves are essentially free — you pay $10 up front, but get a $10 credit that you can redeem after you activate your account.

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals

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Source: The Next Web