VIDEO: Accept Credit Cards With Your Cell Phone
Perfect for garage sales, farmers markets and selling things out of the back of your truck.
A little while ago, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey launched the website for his new company, Square. The company was developing a way for anyone with a phone to accept credit card payments using a special adapter that plugs into the audio jack.
With photo verification as well as regular signature verification and instant, paperless receipts, it was an intriguing idea. Now Digg's Kevin Rose is on board as an investor. Rose demoed the product via his YouTube channel and also revealed that Square would be coming out "in a few months."
Will you be using it?
Let us know in the comments below.
Square for iPhone Demo by Kevin Rose
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Most definitely. I try to live as paperless as possible and this is one step closer to living that dream. This is something that we were just discussing at a recent yard sale. If we could have accepted credit cards some of the items we were selling would have sold that didn't. Cheers to progression...
Man this is like the most absolute like totally awsome idea and... oh f..k I forgot, I don't have a credit card
Yep! I can't wait to have my very first credstick!
Might this make it easier for thieves to pay themselves with your stolen Credit Card?
This would be really good for people with small businesses as well, going to your clients house and having the option for them to pay right then and there with there debit or credit card. Something I will be watching very closely as I could use it.
Pretty cool, now I will be able to pay for a lap dance with my credit card.
I can think of a number of times I wanted to donate money to a charity set up in front of walmart of wherever, and I didn't have any cash. This would totally solve that problem for charities, because now they will be able to take plastic payments and instantly be able to process them.
*i mean plastic donations (not payments). Toms needs an edit button.
Wow, something to make the iPhone useful? Apple will have to deny the app, it's too forward looking for a "Can't cut and paste" type of mentality such as Apple's!
Nice! make it easier for people to copy cards! hooray!
Seriously, if you were at a yard sale you would have faith in the teenager swiping your card into his phone? no thanks
No way am I swiping my credit card on someone's phone at a garage sale. I'm sure there's a way to capture card details on the iPhone for later use. You just need another app running in the background that records any data transmitted from the card swipe.
No thanks.
It is in fact an interesting concept.
However, It would be way to easy to exploit. Wireless anything + credit card = bad idea. Even if the user/owner isn't exploiting it. Someone near by could easily.
No way am I swiping my credit card on someone's phone at a garage sale. I'm sure there's a way to capture card details on the iPhone for later use. You just need another app running in the background that records any data transmitted from the card swipe.No thanks.
hehehe
Where you can be safe in that side, iphone can run 2 things at once!!!
it just a beauty pageant queen
lol I guess I am a little old school. All I see is a device that I can mod to change my Credit card strip so say what ever I want. Free Money!!!
It is in fact an interesting concept.However, It would be way to easy to exploit. Wireless anything + credit card = bad idea. Even if the user/owner isn't exploiting it. Someone near by could easily.
hehehe
Well you can be safe in that side, iphone can't run 2 things at once!!!
it just a beauty pageant queen
The USA needs chip and PIN before anyone should ever anywhere at all absolutely ever consider anything remotely in the region of something even slightly similar to this in any tangible or non-tangible way at all, full stop. For that reason; This is a bad idea. Bring it over the UK though, we have C&PIN
That transaction would have to be encrypted in order for it to be secure. The data could easily be saved onto the iPhone. Cool, but uncool.
@aracheb
Iphone/Ipod Touch is running a lot of processes at the same time. Just do a "ps -ef" on the Terminal of a jailbreaked device, and you will see lots of them. So it's possible to have another process on background doing nasty things.
Lame, this news is old. This technology has already been developed and in use in other countries such as Japan and Finland for 2-3 years. The states even had a trial in Boston already, these guys are behind innovation...
Clintonio, many cards in the us have chip/pin, like my amex for example. Also, if the dongle encrypts the data immediately and then transmits it, no wireless or iPhone based man in the middle attack could occur, very secure.
Such a stupid idea. An average programmer can make a software who looks like the payment software. So you will buy a CD for the price of all your money on the credit card... Nice
Yeah - No LOL they can't even go the route of saying that you can use a credit card with a chip on it, there is only a slide option and not a smart card option to insert the card. You know they wanted it to be small so it could be portable but it just made it worse. If the added the smart card chip reader and made the extra device with a cable that attached to the phone and even then trying to get people to buy it would be like damn that is to big or I still wont pass my credit card on your iPhone cuz I know there's an app for that. I think that some innovators make designs with money symbols in their eyes, trying to take their business in to flea markets and not actually looking at either security or skepticism of people. I love it how he says that it sends a map to show you where you did the transaction as fraud protection LOL like it can't be modified to show that you made it somewhere else LOL
Convenient ideas don't normally mean good ideas and definitely do not mean good investment; just wait for the first news article "teen steals 1000 credit card numbers using his iPhone while selling pirated DVDs and Games" LOL.
"Just wait for the first news article "teen steals 1000 credit card numbers using his iPhone while selling pirated DVDs and Games" LOL."
LOL, I was thinking the same thing. Credit cards belong in the 1980's along with leather pants and perms.
Debit cards are much more secure and won't let you fall into the trap of spending money you don't have.
Mike00, there is plenty of room in that device to have a chip reader, it's not a contact reader, it's RFID. I don't know if it does have it, just saying it wouldn't be a problem to put one in to have the security of both.
Clintonio, many cards in the us have chip/pin, like my amex for example. Also, if the dongle encrypts the data immediately and then transmits it, no wireless or iPhone based man in the middle attack could occur, very secure.
That is definitely quite secure then (excluding the obvious keylogging problems that could happen)! I just guess I would wait until the whole country was securely on Chip&PIN. The UK government forced it in with legislation I believe, which in retrospect was one of the few good banking decisions they ever made!
Any reason you couldn't use a phones web browser to pay into someones paypal account? I'm just not sure why you would even need the scanner except for expediency. All you really need is the card number. The signature and imprint don't come into play unless there is a dispute right?
I guess the GSM encryption key hack came just in time!
Any reason you couldn't use a phones web browser to pay into someones paypal account? I'm just not sure why you would even need the scanner except for expediency. All you really need is the card number. The signature and imprint don't come into play unless there is a dispute right?
Paypal takes about a week to transfer your money.
You'd be better off with internet banking like we have in the Netherlands. All you need is a card reader (you get one when you open a bank account, a PINcard and an internet connection). It's much faster and more secure than anything else.
I don't think you could keylog anything, the scanner would encrypt internally, no output to the iPhone until it's encrypted. You could keylog the amount and sig, but that's it. Guess you'd need a pin pad though huh?
if someone asked my to swipe my card on one of this shady looking things, id tell them to go to prison