Jack Dorsey, co-founder of the Internet’s two hottest companies, Square and Twitter, will be a keynote speaker at our GigaOM RoadMap conference, to be held on November 10 in San Francisco. Dorsey is one of the technology luminaries who will talk about the impact of connectedness. Read more »
As companies like Square and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) pitch themselves as the future of payment processing, they’ll need to remove as many obstac… Read more at paidContent »
Square said today it’s up to $2 billion in annual payments processed and has activated 800,000 merchants for its payment system, up from half a million in May. And it’s made a key change in the way it process payments to appeal to larger merchants. Read more »
Are mobile payments the new speech recognition technologies? One of the bigger stories in mobile this year has been the growing investment a… Read more at paidContent »
The COO of mobile payment startup Square, Keith Rabois, thinks that the mobile payment technology Near Field Communications (NFC) has no value proposition for consumers and merchants, he said at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference on Monday. Read more »
As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We are hosting the fourth edition of our Mobilize: The Internet Conference in San Francisco next week. I will be chatting with folks from Twitter, Instagram, Flipboard, Pandora, Square and T-Mobile USA. We are talking about “what’s next” for mobile. Hope to see you there. Read more »
In the mobile ecosystem with so much changing so rapidly, it’s tough to figure out what to pay attention to. So we’ve gathered up some of the hottest startups in the mobile space to compete in our Mobilize 2011 LaunchPad competition. Check them out. Read more »
Erply, a point of sale and inventory software provider from Estonia, is looking to jump into the ring with Square and Verifone by offering an iPad payment dongle that will process credit card swipes similar to Square but also handle NFC payments. Read more »
Mobile payments — payments initiated by a phone for a transaction at a physical point of sale or online — will total over $750 billion worldwide by 2015, and many predict they will soon begin to replace a typical credit card transaction. This report analyzes and forecasts the mobile payments industry, from its current technologies to the companies implementing them and the trends we can expect in the coming months. Much of the near-term growth of mobile payments will be driven by near-field communication (NFC) technology, but QR and 2D bar codes, mobile POS systems and SMS transactions are also important platforms for companies to consider when creating business models and strategies. Meanwhile, services from the likes of MasterCard, Nokia, Amazon and Google offer examples for others to follow and clues into the future of the industry. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Research in Motion, T-Mobile, Zong and Groupon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Jumio, a secretive online-payments startup created by Jajah founder Daniel Mattes, is finally ready for its close-up. And it’s a fitting metaphor, because Jumio is enabling online credit card payments made by scanning a card with a computer webcam. Read more »
Fresh off its $50 million in funding, note-taking and memory service Evernote is preparing for its first-ever developer conference next month, where it will outline its broader strategy and how it plans on becoming a 100-year company by building a productivity platform. Read more »
The second quarter of 2011 in mobile was all about smartphones, thanks to Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and mobile data consumption ramping up. In the tablet space, the iPad lacked any real competition, though that dominance will surely fade as more and more alternatives — from Cisco, HP and others — emerge. Elsewhere, location-based marketing finally made some headlines, and the groundwork for near-field communications looks to be finally falling into place. Additional companies in this report include Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Research In Motion. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
After taking a place on Square’s board of director’s last week, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is now continuing his Silicon Valley blitz by joining venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as a part-time special advisor. Read more »
One thing is clear: Investors love Square, the payments company co-founded by Jack Dorsey, the co-creator of Twitter. The veteran venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is leading the $100 million investment in the company that is said to be valued at $1 billion. Read more »
PayPal’s mobile payments business is now expected to do $3 billion in volume this year, double what the company predicted last fall. But the bigger challenge and opportunity awaits in mobile payments for offline goods, something PayPal is gearing up for. Read more »
Even with the rising competition from heavyweights Google and PayPal, Square isn’t sweating the added competition. I talked Square COO Keith Rabois about the increasingly busy mobile payments space, how Square will fare over time and the challenges facing both Google and PayPal. Read more »
Not two years after introducing the world to its little mobile credit card reader, Square is looking to write the obituary for the modern cash register–along with every location-based, daily deal and mobile payment app in existence with its new Square Register and Card Case. Read more »
Corduro, a Google Ventures backed start-up, is hoping to provide a potent challenge to mobile payment providers like PayPal and Square as well as back-end payment processors and customer relations software providers with its new cloud payment platform. Read more »
Tabbedout, an innovative Austin, Texas start-up that is tackling the problem of closing out bills at restaurants and bars, said it has completed its Series A round with an additional $3.7 million, raising the total to $5.75 million for the round Read more »
The word is that once upon a time, eBay’s PayPal tried to buy Jack Dorsey’s Square. Today, the company announced that it is buying small Boston-based mobile-payment startup Fig Card. It seems the upstart and the incumbent are on a collision course. Read more »
Visa has invested an undisclosed sum in mobile payments firm Square in what the companies are describing as a “strategic investment.” Square… Read more at paidContent »
The Square credit card reader for iOS devices is now available online at the Apple Store, and will soon be available at brick-and-mortar Apple retail locations. Official Apple Store availability is a significant step in the ongoing rise of Square’s success. Read more »
AisleBuyer, a Boston start-up, is introducing a new photo card capture technology in the coming months that allows merchants and small businesses to process a payment just by taking a picture of the front of credit or debit card with a smartphone. Read more »
Payment company VeriFone recently went after rival Square by releasing a demo app that showed how a user could skim credit card info using Square’s hardware dongle. VeriFone claimed the app couldn’t be used to actually skim, but it turns out that it can — easily. Read more »
It’s unlikely you missed the big brouhaha between San Francisco-based startup Square and VeriFone, a payment processing services provider. VeriFone accused Square of not being secure and being easily hackable. Dorsey denied. This week’s dust-up makes me wonder if VeriFone quite understands its own business. Read more »
As an experienced user of various credit card processing services, I know why VeriFone is concerned enough about Square to employ the kind of scare tactics found in yesterday’s “open letter” — Square is poised to revolutionize the credit card payment industry in a big way. Read more »
Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey responded to VeriFone’s much publicized and questionable attack on its security with an understated letter that defends his mobile payment system’s protections, saying VeriFone’s claims are neither fair or accurate and don’t reflect existing protections in Square and credit cards. Read more »
Internet payment firm VeriFone found that you can easily create an app that uses the payment dongle employed by its competitor Square to skim financial and personal info from a user’s credit card, so it went ahead and created one and released it to the public. Read more »
In a shot across the bow of Intuit and Verifone, mobile payment startup Square is dropping the transaction fees it charges businesses. It will now rely solely on a 2.75 percent flat fee and will waive the 15 cent per transaction fee that it previously charged. Read more »
Square, the San Francisco-based personal financial services company co-founded by Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey, has a simple mission: to become an iconic financial brand, much like Virgin is for airline travel and Apple is for mobile computing. The grand ambition of the company is reflected in […] Read more »
Square, the mobile payment start-up co-built by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has taken on $27.5 million in new funding to help it compete in the increasingly competitive mobile payments market. The latest funding comes from Sequoia Capital, giving the start-up a reported valuation of $240 million Read more »
Intuit is positioning its GoPayment mobile service to compete with Square and others by offering a free version of the service for a limited time. The move may only be temporary, but it underscores the growing attention to mobile payments from companies across the mobile ecosystem. Read more »
Intuit has partnered with mophie to provide a credit card processing solution that uses Apple’s iPhone. The hardware, created by mophie and available today, is aimed at small business owners — especially those who use QuickBooks and are looking for a simple transactional fee structure. Read more »
Keith Rabois, a well-known angel investor and senior executive at social gaming company Slide, that was recently acquired by Google for $182 million is leaving the company and joining Square, a company founded by Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey. Rabois is joining as Square’s general manager. Read more »
Square, a mobile payments startup co-founded by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, launched today. It allows anyone to accept payments via mobile phones such as the iPhone and Android-based devices. But the company needs more than hardware to keep ahead of competitors such as VeriFone. Read more »
I like it when companies port their old games to the iPhone platform, even when the results are somewhat less than amazing. Aside from being the best way to convince your somewhat technophobe friends that the iPhone and iPod touch are totally worth buying, they also […] Read more »
Seven months isn’t a long time for most companies, but it’s practically an era in itself on the hyperkinetic mobile web. One thing that hasn’t changed in the last seven month is PayPal’s visibility on smartphones — it’s there, but it’s hard to find. Read more »
The first guest during Guy Kawasaki’s feature presentation at Macworld was Jack Dorsey, who has recently changed his focus from Twitter to his new startup, Square. Square’s goal is to allow anyone to easily accept credit card payments on their iPhone or iPod touch using a […] Read more »
Jack Dorsey’s Square, Incase, Verifone and now Mophie — these companies have developed credit card readers and are turning the iPhone/iPod touch platform into a new kind of economic engine. All they have to do is get Apple to play ball and get consumers savvy about it all. Read more »
