4 ms·

All smartphones will have NFC chips in the next year or two which will allow payments from your phone. I see a much bigger future in small merchants using that

by hop 16y ago

All smartphones will have NFC chips in the next year or two which will allow payments from your phone. I see a much bigger future in small merchants using that than a card swipe via audio port, but maybe Square will have an NFC solution as well.

zbrock 16y ago
Square's goal is to be device agnostic. We're definitely thinking about NFC and we're looking forward to NFC capable phones hitting the market. Hopefully the Nexus S will get upgraded to be transmit capable soon and we can do some neat things with it.
loire280 16y ago
Credit cards are going to be the best form of payment for vendors for another decade. Even if next year all smartphones have NFC built-in, it will take many more years before there are enough users with NFC to make it worth supporting for a small vendor. Besides, just having the capability doesn't mean a user has created an account -- and connecting to your cell phone bill doesn't count.
- hop 16y ago
  Magnetic cards will surely be around for a long time, but the second NFC comes out on the iPhone 5 (or 6), which Apple has hired a lot of NFC engineers for, I think it will be the thing to have for all merchants. And many do already - my BofA card has an embedded rfid which I have used at a lot of places with non swipe readers. They have been widely used in Japan for the last decade. My point is the playing field will be much more open, because it will be only a software solution, not a hardware+software solution which has more barriers to market - There could essentially be a Visa merchant app that accepts payments from other phones.
- thinkcomp 16y ago
  Not necessarily. NFC isn't really necessary for mobile payments to work. The product I'm working on is a good example of why. http://www.facecash.com http://www.facecash.com
far33d 16y ago
Using the audio port is clearly a "wedge" into the market while smartphone technology catches up to support this kind of thing natively. Would you rather wait to build a market and startup or would you rather already be the market leader when the supporting tech is available?

by hop 16y ago

zbrock 16y ago

Square's goal is to be device agnostic. We're definitely thinking about NFC and we're looking forward to NFC capable phones hitting the market. Hopefully the Nexus S will get upgraded to be transmit capable soon and we can do some neat things with it.

loire280 16y ago

Credit cards are going to be the best form of payment for vendors for another decade. Even if next year all smartphones have NFC built-in, it will take many more years before there are enough users with NFC to make it worth supporting for a small vendor. Besides, just having the capability doesn't mean a user has created an account -- and connecting to your cell phone bill doesn't count.

hop 16y ago
Magnetic cards will surely be around for a long time, but the second NFC comes out on the iPhone 5 (or 6), which Apple has hired a lot of NFC engineers for, I think it will be the thing to have for all merchants. And many do already - my BofA card has an embedded rfid which I have used at a lot of places with non swipe readers. They have been widely used in Japan for the last decade. My point is the playing field will be much more open, because it will be only a software solution, not a hardware+software solution which has more barriers to market - There could essentially be a Visa merchant app that accepts payments from other phones.
thinkcomp 16y ago
Not necessarily. NFC isn't really necessary for mobile payments to work. The product I'm working on is a good example of why. http://www.facecash.com http://www.facecash.com

far33d 16y ago

Using the audio port is clearly a "wedge" into the market while smartphone technology catches up to support this kind of thing natively. Would you rather wait to build a market and startup or would you rather already be the market leader when the supporting tech is available?