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A comment on With IPO Hopes Fading, Square and Box Face Reality Of Commodity Products. Parent comment

Re:With IPO Hopes Fading, Square and Box Face Reality Of Com... by mikesickler on Saturday May 03, 2014 @02:37AM (#7689879)
On the contrary, POS and payments services have never been less "sticky". There are plenty of iPad POS apps and swipe dongle thingy's to choose from, and the cost of switching is negligible, especially for the (Square's) low end of the market, who don't require much functionality.

My biggest problem with Square is that they have tied payments to point-of-sale. You can't use Square, the payments product, with another POS system, and you can't use Square Register with another payments product. This kind of closed ecosystem neither serves the customer nor moves the industry forward.

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Re:With IPO Hopes Fading, Square and Box Face Reality Of Com... by dangrossman on Saturday May 03, 2014 @06:03AM (#7690222)
You don't have to use Square's POS features to use Square as a payment method. Their apps let you just type in a dollar amount to charge. I know one store that uses Vend [1] for their POS and Square for their CC payments. The Vend app launches the Square app when the cashier presses the button to pay by CC, then you switch back to finish the sale.

1: http://www.vendhq.com/

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Re:With IPO Hopes Fading, Square and Box Face Reality Of Com... by mikesickler on Saturday May 03, 2014 @01:23PM (#7691557)
That's not an integration. That's no different than having a standalone CC terminal.
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Re:With IPO Hopes Fading, Square and Box Face Reality Of Com... by dangrossman on Saturday May 03, 2014 @05:11PM (#7692355)
Who said it was? And what's wrong with having a standalone CC terminal? That's how most very small businesses (food delivery, auto service, tables at shows/markets) still take credit cards. Their wireless terminals aren't "integrated" into anything else, it's just a swiper/PIN pad with a 3G modem, and Square is the modern version of that.
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Re:With IPO Hopes Fading, Square and Box Face Reality Of Com... by mikesickler on Saturday May 03, 2014 @07:41PM (#7692743)
It's certainly prefereble to have your POS integrated with your payments system. Otherwise, there's no guarantee, for example, that the amount charged matches the POS total. In addition, it's much easier for employees to steal, and it simply takes longer.
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