Article

Square announces mobile POS system for brick-and-mortar merchants

Square sets sights on brick-and-mortar merchants

May 22, 2011 by James Wester — Editor 1, Mobile Payments Today

Over the weekend, Square CEO Jack Dorsey hinted via his Twitter account that something big was coming for his start-up mobile point of sale company. The big news came today. 

During a short press conference, Dorsey announced the release of the Square Register, a new product aimed at small brick-and-mortar establishments. Dorsey said the Square Register, an iPad application linked to the Square credit card reader, allows small merchants to accept cash and credit card purchases and is intended to replace the traditional cash register and credit card terminal. Dorsey said the integrated app and reader has a much smaller footprint and is a simpler approach for small businesses. 

The Square Register enables not only cash and credit card purchases, but also allows consumers to pay for purchases using virtual in-house accounts, or tabs, linked to a credit or debit card account. Merchants pull up the account using a customer’s name at the point of purchase. The Square Register then charges the purchase to the linked account and sends a receipt to the customer.

Customers must create an account for each participating Square Register merchant. In order to organize these multiple merchant accounts, Square also announced a new customer-facing smartphone application, the Square Card Case. The Card Case stores accounts in a virtual mobile wallet that can also be used to locate participating merchants, view purchase history and even view menus.

The Card Case is available for download to Apple iPhones and Android phones immediately. To access the application, customers need to pay for a purchase by swiping a credit or debit card at one of the 50 test merchants located in New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and St. Louis. Additional merchants will be added soon, Dorsey said.

Dorsey said mobile payments has been receiving significant attention lately, but only Square now provides a solution that connects merchants with consumers all the way through the register.

"We think we have a really interesting solution (to mobile payments)," Dorsey said.

Square also released a major upgrade to its original, “non brick-and-mortar” application used by merchants in the field. Version 2. 0 of the original Square app fixes some bugs and gives the application a cleaner look. The update also includes new options for using the software to make it more effective on the iPad’s larger screen. Users can now place items on virtual “shelves” and create sub-categories of items to include sizes, colors, etc.