New Square Terminal acquires obsolete payment systems in the old

By pressing the color touchscreen of Square's new mobile payment terminal a few times, the bike salesman chooses a helmet and a BMX chain. He then hands over the terminal to his bearded customer, who checks the total cost of the transaction and calls his Apple Watch to finalize the sale.

Full Disclosure: We are in a conference room at the Square headquarters in San Francisco; The "seller" is the property manager of the company, Jesse Dorogusker. And his "client" is Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Square and his neighbor of the next block, Twitter. The two have engaged in a small staging to introduce me to the new Terminal Square.

It was probably inevitable that the society – which has been launched – can build something in this direction. "Payment terminals have been around longer than Square," says Dorsey. "So it's never do not been on our mind. There are whole businesses that do just these things. "

Square Terminal occupies a significantly different niche than Square's existing hardware: its tiny, original smartphone reader, its largest Bluetooth-enabled smart card reader and mobile payments, and its large Square Register display. Unlike readers, the device is an all-in-one gadget that does not require a smartphone or tablet for brain and connectivity. And unlike Square Register, it is ultra-portable, designed for scenarios such as the one played by Dorogusker and Dorsey. It sells for $ 399, with a $ 300 processing credit for new Square merchants, and is available from today on the Square website.

Since the launch of Square in 2009, the company – and its competitors – and once pushed to react, have done a lot to modernize the acceptance of credit cards. But the situation with payment terminals remains complicated. Many terminals are clunky and outdated, difficult to update with new features and provided to merchants as part of a payment processing service contract, assuming a merchant is approved, which is not the case. always the case of small businesses in Europe. 2018.

"Even if a traditional terminal provider agrees to accept payments, you usually sign up for a contract that is at best opaque and probably not as fair," says Dorogusker. "There is a teaser fare, there is a monthly fee, there is a variety of other fees, different cards cost different amounts."

"Square Terminal is our way of fundamentally regulating all these things," he says. Rather than wearing a plastic keyboard and a tiny screen, the device has a 5.5-inch color touch screen that, with its Android-based software, gives the impression of a smartphone embedded in an angular base carved in Square's signature white plastic material. Customers can insert a smart cart at the front of the terminal, switch a magnetic stripe card to its right edge or tap on a smartphone or smartwatch to make a mobile payment. An integrated printer spits receipts at the back, the battery is designed to last a day, and Wi-Fi and Ethernet compatibility enable wireless and wired internet.

The touch screen interface allows the terminal to provide a numeric keypad when needed, but also offers other features such as the ability to select products and prices from a list. Customers can see a detailed list of what they pay for, which is not the case with multipurpose terminals used by small businesses. There will be more to come. "It's the beauty of software-driven hardware," says Dorogusker. "We can control the experience, identify simple changes in the user interface, identify the major trends and features desired by users."

As with other Square payment acceptance methods, the company charges a flat rate of 2.6% plus 10 ¢ for Square Terminal transactions and does not contract anyone. The goal is to allow new users to operate, operate and resume operations in minutes. "It's not even in the category of things they want to think about," says Dorsey. "They want to think about things like hiring people and introducing new ingredients."

"We will probably be surprised how people use it"

Square says its new terminal will attract everyone from dentists to bowling alleys. Although the company has recently been successful in convincing larger companies to join its services, there was no upper limit for the type of companies that are an obvious goal, that it is about the upgrade of old terminals or those who use credit cards for the first time.

But Dorsey points out that Square does not know exactly where the terminal will go, and that's part of the question. "What fascinates me is that it goes back somehow to the beginning of the creation of the company and the creation of the reader," he says. "We had an idea who would use it, but we really did not know how it would be used. This has very similar properties where we will probably be surprised at how people use it. "

So far, Square has tested the terminal in the field and restaurants have asked servers to assign the terminal to customer tables for on-site payment; two salon operators were able to hand it to customers while they were still in the chair. "We also had a plastic surgeon in the beta and we learned that they take the terminal into the treatment room," says Dorogusker. "So that they can, in private, examine the bill and bill the person without having to do it in the lobby. You can imagine that it would be uncomfortable. "

Hopefully, once the merchants have the terminal in their hands, they will instinctively discover how to make it work for them. However, when I ask Dorsey what the new device's quiz is, he goes back to the fact that it's hard for small businesses to think about payments.

"Honestly, the main thing we're competing against is that sellers tend to develop task management systems. It's the saying of "If it's not broken, do not fix it," he says. "We knew this when we arrived on the scene, especially around the merchant account. And then, they actually found how much extra money they were paying and the calculation they had to make to understand this elementary fact were really disappointing. "

Square can still be associated, above all, with a well-designed payment material. But alongside Square's potential for developing its payment processing business, Square Terminal is certainly a good way for the company to find new opportunities for its expanding offering. According to Dorsey, each element of the portfolio helps to reinforce others. And that forces small business owners to be careful.

"Our approach has been not only to stop at the device, but also to connect to a broader ecosystem of tools," he said. "We can manage your payroll, we can give you a loan, we can manage your appointments if you are a salon, in addition to passersby who come to buy a product and use it. [the terminal] slide a map. If we can tell a story that goes beyond visible material, we tend to change minds. "