[siver_john]

Anyone who is going to be buying PoS from Square at a rate greater than just the phone attachment reader, this won't be sufficient for. Using a phone for a business you personally run is fine, using a phone as the central point of your business for even a relatively small fast casual is going to be a nightmare.

And for those even on Square Apple's ipads are still the preferred choice as far as I can tell. So there isn't much of a benefit other than fees.

For anything larger than a small fast casual you quickly run into greater integration needs with things like KDS (of which a few do use tablets, Toast, Fresh, etc, and even then I think ipads are preferred. I know Square integrates with a few of those as well as NorthStar so, I don't think they may have much to fear other than at the low end mom and pop stores.

[desiarnezjr]

POS and payment hardware used to be a fairly high margin vertical hardware business, but I don't think so any longer. The real goal now is merchant / customer acquisition and service lock in. Basically I'd expect the hardware will be given away at some point.

[lostcolony]

I'm not even sure there, at least for another few years. No store, mom and pop or otherwise, would want to be "tap to pay only" as a means of taking credit card payments. There are still plenty of cards out there that don't have RFID chips.

[girvo]

Wow really? That’s surprising for some reason. Here in Australia that’s super common, RFID is in every card you can think of.

If I go to the farmers market on the weekend, they all accept cash or tap-to-pay with a Square tap-only reader, and that’s it.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Payments and mobile service are some of the more weird things about the US given how easily startups or new tech is developed there. There last time I was in the US was years ago. I still had to swipe my card in a few places and getting a new SIM involved me having to talk to someone. By this time in Australia contactless payments were almost everywhere and you just needed to go to a convenience store to get a SIM and activate online.

It looks like they are going through similar weird things with instant bank transfers. In Australia all the major banks just have instant transfers built in. I use the bank app to transfer to friends and they get notified. In the US you Venmo or PayPal or whatever.

[rconti]

Yeah, the US is finally starting to catch up with contactless. Other countries have been strange as well. My understanding is it was popular in Canada for awhile, but then terminals started disappearing?

The first time I was able to use ApplePay (as an American) was on a trip to NZ. In fact, the clerk at the gas station was shocked to see someone pay with their phone, even though this had been possible with Android for some time, and even though contactless itself was old hat there.

As for the SIM thing, that just depends so much on the business model and regulatory environment. Pay as you go is relatively unpopular in the US, and the availability reflects that. But it's not like Italy, where I had to hand over my passport (!) to get a SIM, or Germany, where I had to document where I was "living". I've heard it's even worse in, say, Chile, where you virtually need to be a citizen or permanent resident to get a SIM.

[vineyardmike]

Yea... the Apple Card doesn't have RFID chips.

[Nursie]

Why would it, you have your iPhone, right?

[vineyardmike]

Yea, practically speaking the physical card is just a trinket to get people to sign up for the card.

BUT contact free payment via card and Apple Pay contact free payments are slightly different and I’ve been to POS terminals that had one but not other. But the point was that there exists cards that don’t have nfc capabilities, including the one made by the company at center of article.

[Nursie]

> I’ve been to POS terminals that had one but not other.

They are very, very similar that this surprises me. Apple/Google pay implement the same standards as wireless cards and it should Just Work(TM) everywhere the cards can be accepted. Obviously real life and 'should' don't always marry up.

But it was one of the big drivers of acceptance of the tech in most places - the infrastructure is already there! You probably don't even need to update the firmware on your reader!

> including the one made by the company at center of article.

Sure, but my point is that I believe that's deliberate, because they want you to use the contactless payment capability of your phone. I don't doubt there are other cards out there without the capability, I just think the apple one isn't a great example.

[monkeynotes]

No one uses a mag reader here in Canada. Europe ditto, and sounds like the antipodes too. I don't know anyone who doesn't have RFID cards, debit or credit. Swiping a card through a mag reader is the backup option alone here.

[lostcolony]

I'm in the US. It's not uncommon here. In fact, two of my cards, a Chase Visa, and an Amex, both only support mag stripe and chip; they do not have an RFID chip in them. I could get them replaced, but why? Every POS system supports those; not everyone supports tap to pay.

The US may be an anomaly here, but it always has been. The UK had chip and pin roll out while the US still had mag stripe being the most common; we slowly added chip and signature (we still don't have chip and pin), and now we still aren't anywhere close to universal in tap to pay.

[Nursie]

> No store, mom and pop or otherwise, would want to be "tap to pay only" as a means of taking credit card payments

In the USA maybe. Elsewhere it's already huge.

[lostcolony]

Yep, my apologies for the US centric mindset in the comment; I can't speak to elsewhere.