Video: Jack Dorsey Talks Square And I Buy Him Coffee With It | Hacker News Reader

Video: Jack Dorsey Talks Square And I Buy Him Coffee With It

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16 pointsthemichael12 comments

Sorry, but I'm not impressed. It's a credit card reader and an iPhone app. Yeah, nice and tiny and all, but there's absolutely nothing new or revolutionary here.

The buying experience is not going to change for the better until we can do this stuff with a quick swipe (for lack of a better word, since magstrips are definitly NOT the way to do this) and a thumbprint for a signature, with cryptographically signed receipts automatically emailed to your pre-registered address, or posted to an account on a website where you can retrieve them later, or auto-import them into your accounting software.

Blip. Press. Done. THAT will be impressive.

This is PayPal for 'real life'. Eventually they could remove the need for the scanner and just let people bump to pay (with the appropriate security caveats). That's huge.

Thumbprints on the seller's machine would be useless; they could just save the data. What we really need is the buyer authenticating and somehow notifying the middleman that they want to buy stuff.

Just about as useless as, say, a signature? You are making an incorrect assumption about signatures: They are there to verify or dispute that you authorized a purchase, if necessary, after the fact. The whole point is that the vendor saves the data, because it is his proof that you were there.

Signatures are about managing by exception, because it is impractical to do anything else.

Biometric signing, properly implemented, is far more secure than a signature.

Consider:

* POS system grabs biometric data and encodes it.

* POS system transmits the biometric data to the bank, who returns a cryptographically signed timestamp.

* Biometric signature, authorization, and timestamp are then bundled together and cryptographically signed by the vendor. This becomes the receipt.

* Vendor stores the result locally as proof of sale. Customer receive the same as proof of sale.

Thus, the bank, for the first time, has actual proof of the presence of a customer. This makes the signature stronger. Also, vendor and customer both have much stronger proof of transaction to dispute / verify same.

No system is impossible to subvert. Low-level man-in-the-middle hardware/firmware hacks are always possible. But with some variant of the above, the buying process can be both swift, and much more secure than it is now.

Potential market adoption aside, the technology looks pretty interesting. The little scanner in the video is plugged into the headphone port of an iPod Touch. I'm assuming that this port also accepts microphone input (like the iPhone port) and that the scanner device just transforms the magnetic strip data into sonic frequencies the software understands to be able to "read" the credit card into the app? Neat.

They're already looking for Android and BlackBerry developers. No perpritory dock connector.

One issue I see with this is having to sign with your finger. Sliding my finger around doesn't have the same dynamics as using a pen or stylus.

People will want receipts on site. For day-to-day transactions, it looks like a hassle but I could see this being great for paying back friends or whatever.

If at a business where a receipt is important, it's easy enough to place a wifi receipt-printer nearby.

(I'd be very surprised if the main use of Squareup was "paying back friends".)

Receipts on site...not necessarily. The last few times I've been to the Apple store, I've been content to just pay for whatever I bought standing in the middle of the store, bag it and walk away with the receipt sent to my email. Paper is a hassle in some instances...more to keep up with. At least if the receipt's in my inbox (and I happen to need it), I can search for it without having to destroy my house to find it.

EDIT: Then again...I can see where wanting a receipt could be valid--to make sure you're not getting ripped off. Makes me think of the sign next to registers in most fast food joints: "Call 1-800-whatever if you didn't receive a receipt and get a free order of fries." I'd still go receiptless, though, for places I know to be absolutely legit.

I never want a receipt. It's a waste of paper; I always throw it away right away. When will a receipt for a cup of coffee come in handy? All my credit card transactions are documented by the bank anyway.

Receipts are up there with cashiers giving me a bag for a single item I can easily carry.

Very impressed. Slick hardware and UI, and some great backing behind it. Interested to see how much traction this will get.

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