Square

If you're one of the millions of people operating a website, selling items online, or curating Pinterest boards, you'll likely appreciate the need for high-quality product images. In the absence of a high-end camera, a proper lighting setup, and suitable skills, however, many online sellers are left with lackluster images, potentially impacting sales and follower numbers. Here to help solve that problem is mobile payment company Square.

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This morning Jack Dorsey opened Square's doors to Bitcoin sales, allowing selling and buying from the company's Cash app. This app is extremely simple, allowing users to move money from bank accounts to the app with minimal steps. From there, the app allows the user to purchase bitcoin with a process that's simpler than the one that came immediately before it.

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If you're going to spend money, it may as well be via something as charmingly handsome as the new Square Register. The payments company may be best-known for its smartphone dongles, but now has a completely redesigned dual-touchscreen payments terminal with dedicated hardware. That's as opposed to using an iPad or some other tablet as a register workaround.

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These days, more and more payment methods are going digital. But while we live in a world with Apple Pay, Paypal, and other similar apps and services, we still see some that make the move from digital to physical. The latest example is Square, the payment company founded by Twitter's Jack Dorsey. Just last month we saw a tease that Square could be moving towards physical debit cards, and now we know they are in fact rolling out.

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Thus far, Square has been a mostly digital payment system, but it may not be long before the company breaks into the realm of physical payment cards. There isn't a ton of solid evidence at the moment, but one key piece that may signal where Square plans to head. That single piece of evidence comes in the form of a picture Square founder Jack Dorsey shared on Twitter.

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Square, the mobile payment company behind the iconic little card readers that plug into smartphones and tablets, has just introduced its first NFC reader, taking a step towards contactless payment methods including Apple Pay. The small, white reader is shaped like a (wait for it) square, and the company has made it available first to 100 small businesses across the US, giving them the ability to accept payments from iPhone and Apple Watch users.

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As a credit card payment-related device, the Square Reader accessory for iOS has maintained a decent track record in not falling victim to malicious hacks. Unfortunately, that might be about to change. A group of security researchers have revealed how they were able to hack the Reader, which is used to turn iPads and iPhones into mobile point of sale terminals for merchants, making it capable of stealing credit card information from customers.

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Square has announced its partnership with Apple Pay at the WWDC15. The new Square "Contactless + Chip Reader" will be able to take payments from Apple Pay via NFC and credit cards via its EMV chip reader. Although it can scan EMV chips, the new reader is unable to read magnetic card swipes. To combat this, Square announced that it will be shipping traditional magnetic stripe reader with the new Apple Pay/EMV chip reader, ensuring that merchants can accept a variety of payment methods.

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In social mediums, there’s nothing more ubiquitous than hashtags. It’s our method for tracking topics, making snide jokes, and even relaying a sub-story for a post. Piggybacking on that energy, Square is introducing something they call ‘$Cashtag’, which is just like a hashtag, except with the dollar sign ahead of your tag. Square’s main goal here is to allow businesses to get paid quickly and effectively, and without the need to adopt a particular payment scheme like Google Wallet/Android Pay or Apple Pay.

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It's less than a year old, but Square Order's time in the market will be very short-lived indeed. The service that allowed users to preorder food and drinks from local establishments was launched middle of last year at the same time that Square Wallet was announced to be closed off. It seems like a recurring curse, but now it's Square Order's time to bite the dust as well. On the one hand, it's not surprising given how it failed to take off, but Square isn't exactly backing out of the market just yet.

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Square has made a name for itself as a solution for mid-size businesses who want an easy to use, effective point-of-sale system. The small dongle slips easily into an audio jack, which connects to an app for payment processing. With low transaction fees and a fairly robust set of tools for small businesses, Square is widely adopted, with their hardware often attached to an iPad. A new rumor suggests Square is hard at work on a tablet of their own, powered by Android.

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When Starbucks teamed up with Square for their payment processing, it was seen as a big win for the mobile payment space. If Square could compete with traditional payment processors, it stood to reason any startup could. Over time, the relationship began to fracture, and now the mobile payment angle to their partnership is done. Square is shuttering Wallet and rolling it into Order, which lets you order ahead and pay for items before you get to the store. Starbucks won’t be accepting Order, instead concentrating efforts on their competing proprietary product.

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