Today Square updated its Card Case digital wallet app. If you leave Square’s “auto open” tabs feature on and walk to your favorite merchant, you can place your order just by saying your name. Merchants who have signed up for Square will be able to see users who are within 100 meters of a location. Just say “put it on [insert name here],” and the payment will be completed. Then you’ll receive a push notification on your phone with the charge amount.
“We want to make payments fade away,” said Megan Quinn, director of products for Square. “People don’t appreciate that; they enjoy making a purchase and feeling like a regular at places they shop.”
In his presentation, Jack Dorsey described mobile purchasing as something that should feel “magical,” like a one-click Internet purchase.
Merchant cards can be synced with a business’ Twitter stream. (After all, this is Jack Dorsey’s other start-up.) By integrating business’ Twitter streams into the app, users can see if there are any additional deals or discounts. Users can also tweet at a business with any questions, comments or feedback.
Over 20,000 merchants are catalogued in this directory since it opened to the public in August. Currently, 800,000 merchants have activated Square.
In August, Square updated its app, no longer requiring a signature on purchases under $25. Square launched Square Register, a tool for payment processing and for merchants to organize menus, sales and receipts, in May of this year.
Square is not an NFC. It’s also not a dongle, which turns your smartphone into a credit card reader. This new feature places Square in competition with dongle providers Verifone, Intuit, Erply, ROAMPay, TRUSTe and PayAnywhere.
