Square now in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Square now in Japan

squareup.com

44 pointspsawaya36 comments

I swear I'm never going to catch up to the fact that Square no longer means the folks who created Final Fantasy.

I've always known them as Square Enix.

Square Co. merged with Enix approximately 10 years ago.

At the HN meetup in Tokyo just last week people were complaining about the lack of something like Square in Japan. I guess things will get better now.

Transforming your iPad/iPhone into a register is also pretty neat. I wonder if they'll look into putting an NFC reader in there and interface with all the IC cards here. Most people don't pay for their coffee by credit card.

Coming from somebody who has always wanted to visit Tokyo, I can only imagine what the HN meetups are like.

you can look at #hntokyo tag for some tweets about the events/pics. patio11 was there in all his glory as well.

The HN meetups in tokyo might not be as you imagine. :-) Japan is not as startup-friendly as you might suppose based on the amount of technology that comes out of the country, but things are changing here. In the past few years we've seen a lot more interest in entrepreneurship and startups, VC's, and incubators.

We run a casual, low-pressure mixer kind of event about once a month. If you come to Japan, you can follow our blog (http://www.makeleaps.jp/blog/en/) or signup on Doorkeeper to get notified of events. We get lots of visitors from abroad swinging through and we're always looking to help support other startups in Japan or small businesses trying to enter the market here. It's a really good crowd of people.

There's also a meetup for HN readers in the kansai area of Japan if you're visiting there.

How's the tech meetup scene in Tokyo these days? I'm there 3-4 times a year, but in previous years, I haven't really found much to crash.

As I said, it's starting to get more interesting. Sign up for our meetup newsletter and you'll get emailed about events and/or look me up when you come though.

We were complaining about the lack of Stripe.

There have are some Japanese startups, such as Coiney (http://coiney.com/) who are already doing the same thing as Square.

Oh right, Stripe. I was thinking of the payment processing service, and somehow looked at this page and was able to keep cognitive dissonance that that and this POS tool was the same.

So I take it that Japan doesn't have EMV chips in their bank cards yet? I'm curious to see how Square tackles that when they hopefully expand to Europe and Australia.

Many don't, and basic debit accounts don't offer 'standard' cards (VISA, etc...). Japan also has a culture of using cash everywhere (I have seen people handling the equivalent of 1000s $ in cash numerous times), and it will be interesting to see what square can do there. Interesting challenges, and definitely something that needs improvements in Japan.

I remember one of my first experience with a Japanese ATM... I put an extra 0 at the end and man, was I surprised when all that cash just kept coming out.

I'd prefer to see Square be able to work with Suica, Pasmo, and all the other common ways that people actually pay for things here in Japan (besides cash of course)

Cash usage is mostly because people feel they are more likely to get cheated by the banks then be robbed (which is probably a pretty fair assessment of risk ;).

I remember in the past making a $6,000 bank transfers by going to the convenience store ATM taking out money and going to the bank ATM. I don't know anywhere else in the world where I would feel safe doing that.

There is also a lot of electronic money usage. Many people carry hundreds of dollars on their rail cards.

Credit cards are considered risky in Japan. My understanding is that chargebacks are not enshrined in law so its not guaranteed and whether it is or not most people presume they will have to pay if their credit card is fraudulently charged.

Convenience store payments are also popular because they are low risk and convenient.

They've had standalone systems like Edy and other systems tied into retailers on their phones for years. Given that Japan is hugely a cash based society, I wonder if this will really take off.

Been to an Apple Store in the last month (In Australia, at least)? This is how Apple tackles it http://www.ingenico.com/en/products/payment-terminals/mobili...

Interesting, it seems a little too bulky to get consumer traction but it's definitely a cool approach.

And you get a real FIPS-compliant hardened device manufactured by someone that actually knows (and tries) how to handle security/crypto vs Square that doesn't really offer anything as such and that handles your track data in the non-protected memory of the phone...

Square has expanded to Canada. We have an impending chip legislation that takes effect I think within the next two years? I'm sure it's in the works

This is definitely cool, but I'm really holding out for Stripe to come to Japan. An easy API for web app monetization would make a big difference.

A topic from yesterday "Apple Is Using Sass, And They’re Doing It Wrong"…

Also Square? https://divoqsdr0fzyc.cloudfront.net/assets/core-f5784136cd1...

It's interesting how their homepage design 'looks japanese'. The woman's shoes; squeaky clean, almost artificial skin in the hand portraits; the tiled colorful boxes; flat buttons & footer. Something reminiscent of Uniqlo.

"almost artificial skin"?

Yeah, look at those last two shots. Lots of retouching, no human hands look like that.

I'm looking forward to having them launch in the UK! Does anyone here have access to the beta?

What beta?

I don't think Square can come to the UK in their current form. The card reader, although could technically work, will not be allowed by the credit card companies here. Square would need to make a small chip and pin reader for phones, similar to what PayPal have done.

Are confusing Square with Stripe? If so I am in the beta and its brilliant. You can get in the beta by emailing them.

And you can't 'just' have a small chip reader. The PIN can only be entered in hardware, so you end up with something ridiculous like this http://www.ingenico.com/en/products/payment-terminals/mobili...

This is curious, why can it only be entered in hardware? Is it a safety precaution?

You need control of the hardware to insure security. Think about what you could do if you run the credit card verification software in a debugger.

Yes, if the pin number is entered into the software running on the phone then that software can easily be changed to log people pin numbers.

True, but eventually the hardware PIN has to become a software PIN that will be transmitted. Why is it more difficult to sniff out hardware PINs?

The PIN is only transmitted to the chip embedded in the card. If the PIN matches, the smart card chip authorizes the transaction. So the PIN is never transmitted to the card processor, just the authorization message from the card. They only allow specialized tamper-proof terminals for Chip and PIN cards as that's the only place you could sniff the PIN.

I was indeed confusing the two! Thanks!

Great work!

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