Square Finally Gives Up on Square Wallet and Bets on New Order-Ahead App
recode.net
recode.net
"Does this merchant use Square? Sweet - I'll give it a try. Pull phone out of pocket, open app, wait for GPS to lock on and find the merchant, check in to merchant, tell checkout person I'm using wallet. Wait for them to try to figure it out since I'm the first who has used it in a month. Charge account"
vs.
"Pull piece of plastic out of wallet. Charge account".
But I don't really know why I had to do that - in plenty of other places I can charge ~$5 without signing. And the software was controlled by Square. So effectively, Square Wallet helped me solve a problem that Square caused in the first place.
Now I have Google Wallet enabled for tap payments on my phone. Every time I use it I feel like I'm living in the future. Except I can only use it in Duane Reade.
I've only seen investigations for online orders, digital purchases, etc. and not for a restaurant-type setting so it would be interesting to know if video can be used.
Whereas down here in the states we're lucky if Walgreens, McDonald's, and Old Navy will take NFC payments.
That seems to be how a lot of NFC implementations in the US have gone too. My understanding is that people gave up on trying to line their phones up correctly on the NFC parking meters installed around SF. I would love to know if that's not true.
Order drink, chat with server while they make it, they know by now you're probably paying with Square. Done.
vs.
Order drink, chat with server while they make it, dig in purse for wallet, hope it's not one of those days where you accidentally left your wallet back at home while switching bags. (Yes this really happens to me sometimes.)
If you have, say, a coffee shop you regularly go work at, and they use Square, Wallet is totally awesome.
This situation seems just as likely as the one you mentioned.
Happens all the time. I almost never forget my smartphone somehow.
I'll admit it - I threw up a little bit in my mouth when I heard "magical" in this context. For me, utility is the magic.
And then this: "That said, the company raised some eyebrows a few weeks back when it said it would charge businesses eight percent for these order-ahead transactions, rather than the 2.75 percent flat rate for most credit card purchases that run through Square’s platform. The reasoning, it said, was that the feature would help bring in new customers."
8%? For a SMB operating on likely thin margins? Merchants would be crazy to sign up for this service.
Disclosure: I work for a company somewhat in this space.
They're justifying it as a customer acquisition expense, but you have to pay for it in perpetuity. Not good.
I don't know whether that'll translate well to things other than takeaway, but Square obviously thinks it will.
Utility is definitely the long-term driver, but I'm eternally surprised how far a product can get on "magic". 3D, for example, has been running on that since at least the 1950s.
You can loose both, you can forget both, Also credit cards are water proof, drop proof, have no battery issues, no network connection issues. Even though you could leave your credit card at home you still need to carry your drivers license, work badge, grocery discount card, student id, gym membership card, atm card in case you need to get cash, make up, car keys, so what if you have to carry an extra card.
- It's a bit easier to pull out my phone from my pocket vs. pulling out my wallet, then locating my card, and then pulling that out
- Tapping my phone is an easier process than aligning and sliding my card through a narrow slit
- I'd love it if coin-like functionality is one day integrated into my phone, so I can select a specific card to use vs. digging through my wallet for it, or switch cards quickly and try again if the first one gets denied, etc.
These are all admittedly minor, but many successful technologies are about increased convenience anyway.
Here in Japan the train companies have NFC cards. The cards act mostly as cash. You put money on the card itself. I don't know exactly how the accounting works but AFAIK there's no server being contacted when you make a purchase. The system some how instantly deducts the money from your card and updates your history on the card.
This makes them super convenient unlike stuff like Square Wallet or even Google Wallet. You tap the card/phone on the machine and you've paid in under 1 second. No need to press anything, type any passwords, nothing.
The chips were later added to feature cell phones around 2006 so you could tap your phone instead of a card. You can also add more cash on them from your phone. Some Japan only Android phones also have them. Of course iPhone does not.
Trains, busses, many taxis, vending machines, convenience stores, some restaurants have the readers next to their registers.
Transactions are stored on the card and many laptops in Japan have built-in readers. My 2006 Vaio did. Touch your card to some spot on the surface of the laptop and get instant expense report for work/taxes. You can add credit to the cards on your laptop as well.
I have no idea how they prevent fraud given they can be updated locally (filling them with money without going through the proper channels). As for theft, scanning people as they walk by, they do seem to need to be within 1cm or so to read/update. I haven't looked into it though. On the other hand they aren't tied to any other money meaning they're basically like carrying cash. If you lose it all you lost is your money on the card and your purchase history. There's no "account" and it's not connected to any bank or credit card so the damage is minimized.
I have no idea if those would go over anywhere in the USA except maybe NYC, Chicago, SF. They arguably work in Japan because so many people commute so even if you never purchase anything they're super convenient for commuting (no need to buy tickets). Once you have one they end up being convenient for other things.
At the same time, I don't see anything less ever taking off in the USA. Google Wallet etc aren't more convenient than credit cards. Felica cards are.
http://www.sony.net/Products/felica/
I realize I think in SF the Clipper card and in London the Oyster cards are the same tech? But I don't think either can be used for anything other than trains/busses.
I was up there last fall and they were just starting to roll them out.
Square wallet was cool, but the experience was obviously incomplete. With Order-Ahead, my routine has become super convenient. I order some food, then go to the gym without having to bring anything-- no wallet or phone or keys. When I'm done working out, I stop by the restaurant on the way home and pick up my food.
I tried Order-Ahead this morning, the experience still feels incomplete, but you can tell Square is creeping towards a much smoother way for customers to interact with businesses.
This has good outcomes for both the store and Square.
For the store, having the kiosks helps reduce entry errors and waste (no order takers missing the customer saying 'no-mayo') as well as being able to keep less staff on hand.
On the Store's backend - tickets just come out of the printer (or show in their view of the app) so it's not so jarring when an order-ahead entry gets thrown into the mix. Plus each person using the Kiosk entry can get a very natural 'up-sell' to the order ahead app.
There's still room for mistakes where the chef/cooks/employees miss "no mayo", and where the customer fucks up and forgets to say "no mayo" in the first place or can't because they can't figure out how to say it. Or something similar to that. And then customers expect you to magically read their minds anyway.
Why do I say this? One day at my restaurant I watched someone ask for "extra mayo" and I watched the cook put double the usual amount on there, which is customary for "extra x" orders. Customer then took the burger apart and said "that's not enough". Cook then doubled the mayo that's already on there. At this point keep in mind that the burger is coated in mayo and will be dripping it while he's eating - hell, it's already oozing mayo everywhere and it's quite gross to look at. She started using spoons to pile it on (also because it was already served so we can't use our regular utensils to put more mayo on there). He then started screaming obscenities about how my cook is such a cheapass and she's terrible at her job because who the fuck calls his burger "extra mayo" because he wants EVEN MORE MAYO on there. At this point I was shocked for a second but my brain finally kicked in fast enough to tell him to apologize and leave or else I'm calling the police before he might do something stupid like throwing food. He left his burger behind and I had the great pleasure of letting the cook throw it out. Really, you want even more mayo than that you tell people how much mayo you want in the first place. Or bring your own, because there was more mayo than meat on the burger - not kidding.
Then there's the winner of the month the other day where a customer spent _forever_ asking for the price of a food and then the same food without fries, and then ordered the food without fries because she couldn't afford like the $1 extra for fries and dug around in her purse to even pay for the food by itself. She called back two days later saying "so I ordered x with fries and i got the food without fries on x day at x time, can i get a refund, it was x cashier and she screwed up" - lady, for one you were the only person that ordered that in the couple hours around the time you gave us and we see it on the POS, if you had a problem you should have brought it up before you even dug in, we also STILL remember what you did because not many customers dig around and upturn their purse on the counter to pay for a $3 item, and lastly there is no way in hell I'm believing a random stranger like that before my own employees that I trust to tell me the truth because I don't punish them for most small mistakes like that.
So yeah. The customer is ...snark always....snark snort right.
BTW when I first took over said restaurant, Square Register actually didn't even support modifiers and didn't for a while after that - and it's still meh compared to other iPad systems on the market. Lots of competition and mediocre apps makes me want to do something in this industry (and how many developers actually can say they have experience with restaurants?) and then I stop caring because it's "good enough"..maybe I should just go work for one of these companies.
Unfortunately, it seems that only "progressive" merchants are the ones who enable pay-by-phone.
There was actually a merchant who told me they've disconnected the feature, because "people who live nearby, would often appear on their screen, when they passed by." I thought this was pretty much retarded, given those same people were their regulars, but whatever.
It's just a little sad to see cool technology being dropped.
Almost none of the local merchants I tried using Wallet with knew about the feature, and some merchants didn't show up in it at all (they were using Square to run simple cash transactions -- i.e., no product catalog entered into Square).
It is SUPER ubiquitous when you go to a comic book convention; anyone who is at all serious about sitting behind a table selling their comics will have a Square reader. I'm one of those people, and we LOVE Square because it's made it a lot easier to make a sale.
When I go to the local farmer's market, a lot of the people there use Square as well. There's a fair number of clunky single-purpose credit card devices, and some other credit card acceptance methods that work much like Square, but over the past year or two I've seen people mostly shifting to Square.
Note that the two classes of itinerant merchants I cite usually don't work with Wallet; that requires having a fairly permanent place of doing business.
There should be a kickstarter for media coverage. e.g. this tech is so neat and has such a good chance of being transformative that 60 Mintues, or some other big media outlet should to a 15 minute piece on it.
Their POS system combined with an easy way to enable online ordering is a huge win for the retailer.