For a payments system which is designed to speed things up, the launch of Square seems exceptionally slow. The device is a magnetic stripe reader which used the audio jack on a phone. Currently they have software for iPhones and Android phones, but as Mobile Money Exchange veterans know it’s not about the technology.

The system, like PayPal, allows people without a merchant services account to take credit cards. Like PayPal there is an application that allows people to type card details in but the clever bit is the reader which means taking payments with an iPhone is just as easy as it is with a bank PDQ terminal.
The latest blog posting on the Square website says that while they have countered manufacturing problems there are still traditional banking issues to be resolved.

The company, founded by Twitter entrepreneur Jack Dorsey raised $10m in venture capital, but will need to address the problems with the finance infrastructure rapidly as there are a lot of other in the space, not least Barclaycard which announced an iPhone jacket that reads both magnetic stripes and NFC at Mobile World Congress last February. Barclaycard not only has the banking infrastructure, there is a deal in place with operator Orange.