Square is perhaps one of the hottest startups in all of mobile payment processing. The company, which is backed by a myriad of venture capitalists and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is setting the mobile payments space on fire.
The newly-improved app sports a payment method based on the credit cards in your wallet. As part of the app, a user can enter their key payment information including their credit card or debit card numbers to save for future use.
The new app works as follows:
1. User enters key data – A Square user need only add their critical payment information including credit card numbers and cvv2 verification ID to save for future use. The Square app automatically saves all critical information.
2. Location determines payment – You can request to pay a specific Square-enabled merchant via your Square app, using the payment method that you requested when you uploaded your information. A credit or debit card selection allows you to choose the type of payment method you wish to use.
3. Verify the payment – The Square service automatically connects to the nearby merchant to validate the payment. As part of the Square service, a user uploads a picture of themselves to be verified by the person behind the counter. Once approved, the user simply approves the purchase on their phone to have the charge automatically billed to their existing credit card account.
The new Square system may completely change the way payments are made by phone. Complete with redundancy for security – very few systems compare the picture of a payer to the person using a credit card – it may be safer than any other payment system on the market today, even your existing credit card.
So far, only San Francisco Bay area companies are using the new technology, but as news spreads to less technology savvy cities, expect Square to become a major new mobile payments system.