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I can't read the article, because the Bloomberg site, in its infinite wisdom, shows me the mobile homepage. By the headline alone, it sounds like bad news for S

I can't read the article, because the Bloomberg site, in its infinite wisdom, shows me the mobile homepage. By the headline alone, it sounds like bad news for Square.

lurch_mojoff 16y ago
The article mostly talks about a supposed confirmation by some analyst person that Apple will add NFC support to the next batch of iOS devices. The payment service seems to be basically conjecture. If the part about NFC is true, and especially if it is a 3rd party accessible, programmable NFC system, it could actually be very, very good news for Square - that would make things like phone to phone payments possible, it would make it possible to read those new Visa and Mastercard contactless credit cards, and so on.
- Zev 16y ago
  ..that would make things like phone to phone payments possible.. Maybe I'm missing something, but, why couldn't Square do something like this on their own already?
nika 16y ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding Square's business model, but I think it is more of an opportunity for them. The NFC lets people with iphones make payments. Square's dongle lets people take payments. Square could make a new dongle that receives NFC signals and runs it thru the payment processing backend to let people take payments with their phones, the way they do for credit cards. If Apple wants wide adoption, they will have to make payment taking an open opportunity, because there are so many different situations where people take credit cards now. So Square could plug into that, and would be competing with Apple to provide payment reception hardware and sofware to retailers-- which is the kind of competition Apple really likes, because Apple is in the platform business, rather than the "selling low volume terminals to retailers" business. So, I think Square will be able to plug into Apple's platform, just as they plug into Visa's platform now.

I can't read the article, because the Bloomberg site, in its infinite wisdom, shows me the mobile homepage. By the headline alone, it sounds like bad news for Square.

lurch_mojoff 16y ago

The article mostly talks about a supposed confirmation by some analyst person that Apple will add NFC support to the next batch of iOS devices. The payment service seems to be basically conjecture. If the part about NFC is true, and especially if it is a 3rd party accessible, programmable NFC system, it could actually be very, very good news for Square - that would make things like phone to phone payments possible, it would make it possible to read those new Visa and Mastercard contactless credit cards, and so on.

Zev 16y ago
..that would make things like phone to phone payments possible.. Maybe I'm missing something, but, why couldn't Square do something like this on their own already?

nika 16y ago

Maybe I'm misunderstanding Square's business model, but I think it is more of an opportunity for them. The NFC lets people with iphones make payments. Square's dongle lets people take payments. Square could make a new dongle that receives NFC signals and runs it thru the payment processing backend to let people take payments with their phones, the way they do for credit cards. If Apple wants wide adoption, they will have to make payment taking an open opportunity, because there are so many different situations where people take credit cards now. So Square could plug into that, and would be competing with Apple to provide payment reception hardware and sofware to retailers-- which is the kind of competition Apple really likes, because Apple is in the platform business, rather than the "selling low volume terminals to retailers" business. So, I think Square will be able to plug into Apple's platform, just as they plug into Visa's platform now.