Best of Macworld: Square

February 16, 2010 by admin

Editor’s note: Six members of Beatweek’s editorial staff were at Macworld 2010 to report on the newly introduced products for iPhone and iPod users. Here’s one of the twelve best we found. For a full rundown of all the top new products at Macworld 2010, check out Beatweek Magazine’s February 16th issue

The star of the show isn’t the ninety-nine cent headphone port adapter that allows you to swipe credit cards into your iPhone – and it’s not even necessarily the companion app that does the processing and includes everything from on-screen finger signatures to email receipts. The real breakthrough here is that Square’s indie system of accepting credit cards doesn’t involve any merchant houses or their insane layering of fees which make it financially impractical for small vendors to accept credit cards at all.

It sounds too good to be true. In fact we didn’t believe it until we used the product to charge a small amount to one of our own credit cards and then confirmed that the charge actually was billed. Fees of about three percent are deducted from what the vendor receives, and there are no per-month, per-day or per-transaction flat fees tacked on, as is typically the case with credit card merchant accounts.

The upshot is that iPhone users who run small businesses and even street merchants will be able to accept mobile credit and debit card payments. We like the fact that the hardware component is under a dollar, but what we like even more is that Square’s developer told us he wants to get his platform onto the more sophisticated iPhone credit card swiping hardware products that are coming to market.

Read about all of Beatweek’s “Best of Show at Macworld 2010″ winners and finalists in the February 16th issue of Beatweek Magazine, which will feature a cover story interview with American Idol winner Taylor Hicks and more.