4 ms·

What would be amazing is if they started taking Interac as well.

msbarnett 14y ago
Yeah, it feels significantly less useful in the Canadian market without support for Interac. You couldn't run a business with just this, here (unless you want to get yelled at by, and lose a lot of sales to, the 90% of your customers who are going to want to pay by debit and not credit).
- danudey 14y ago
  My girlfriend was selling at a craft fair recently, and I bought her a nice pair of earrings from another vendor who used Intuit's GoPayment system, and honestly I probably wouldn't have remembered to come back once I had cash (if I'd even gone to get any). In that sort of environment, the standard is 'cash only', so adding Visa/MC to that is a bonus, not a drawback, and in my case it made her a $60 sale she wouldn't have otherwise had. This is especially true for higher-ticket items like silver jewellery, where I'm not likely to have $60 kicking around in my pocket, but I'll have no problem putting $60 on my Visa. Personally, I also find it hard to part with $60 in cash (more tangible) vs. putting it on my Visa or debit card. For actual businesses (like bigger food carts), a proper 3G bank terminal is probably the appropriate response, but in places where people aren't likely to expect any card use at all (smaller food carts, craft fairs, yard sales), having Square (or similar) is a net positive.
  - msbarnett 14y ago
    The problem is, that's really a different use case/value proposition than Square has in the US. Square is a godsend for small businesses there. Square's all over Portland, for instance, not just at yard sales and craft faires but in real businesses because it's an absolutely disruptive form of payment that lets them avoid some onerous fees and setup costs, and it lets them accept debit because debit piggybacks on the credit system in the US. But it's pretty crippled for that here in Canada. I know several small business, including my wife's, who were dying for Square to come here, because getting set up with a proper payment terminal in Canada is obscenely expensive for a small business. But there's absolutely no way that they could use this as offered, with zero debit support, ubiquitous customer demand for debit usage, and no support for chip-reading in an environment where chip usage will be mandatory in 2 years and in which not using a chip already causes credit card transactions to be declined as 'suspicious' at a fairly high rate.
    - mcmatterson 14y ago
      I have to agree. I used Square in the US and loved it; since coming back to Canada I've been singing its praises to anyone who'll listen. However, now that it's launched and we've had time to think through what it looks like on the ground, these all look like pretty serious limitations to its widespread applicability in Canada. Although it's still useful for my needs (the odd Craigslist purchase, craft fairs, pop-up stores in the neighbourhood), I can't see it being as disruptive here as it is in the US given these limitations.

Yeah, it feels significantly less useful in the Canadian market without support for Interac. You couldn't run a business with just this, here (unless you want to get yelled at by, and lose a lot of sales to, the 90% of your customers who are going to want to pay by debit and not credit).

danudey 14y ago
My girlfriend was selling at a craft fair recently, and I bought her a nice pair of earrings from another vendor who used Intuit's GoPayment system, and honestly I probably wouldn't have remembered to come back once I had cash (if I'd even gone to get any). In that sort of environment, the standard is 'cash only', so adding Visa/MC to that is a bonus, not a drawback, and in my case it made her a $60 sale she wouldn't have otherwise had. This is especially true for higher-ticket items like silver jewellery, where I'm not likely to have $60 kicking around in my pocket, but I'll have no problem putting $60 on my Visa. Personally, I also find it hard to part with $60 in cash (more tangible) vs. putting it on my Visa or debit card. For actual businesses (like bigger food carts), a proper 3G bank terminal is probably the appropriate response, but in places where people aren't likely to expect any card use at all (smaller food carts, craft fairs, yard sales), having Square (or similar) is a net positive.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  The problem is, that's really a different use case/value proposition than Square has in the US. Square is a godsend for small businesses there. Square's all over Portland, for instance, not just at yard sales and craft faires but in real businesses because it's an absolutely disruptive form of payment that lets them avoid some onerous fees and setup costs, and it lets them accept debit because debit piggybacks on the credit system in the US. But it's pretty crippled for that here in Canada. I know several small business, including my wife's, who were dying for Square to come here, because getting set up with a proper payment terminal in Canada is obscenely expensive for a small business. But there's absolutely no way that they could use this as offered, with zero debit support, ubiquitous customer demand for debit usage, and no support for chip-reading in an environment where chip usage will be mandatory in 2 years and in which not using a chip already causes credit card transactions to be declined as 'suspicious' at a fairly high rate.
  - mcmatterson 14y ago
    I have to agree. I used Square in the US and loved it; since coming back to Canada I've been singing its praises to anyone who'll listen. However, now that it's launched and we've had time to think through what it looks like on the ground, these all look like pretty serious limitations to its widespread applicability in Canada. Although it's still useful for my needs (the odd Craigslist purchase, craft fairs, pop-up stores in the neighbourhood), I can't see it being as disruptive here as it is in the US given these limitations.