| My questions regarding Card Case: 1) How is it going to move away from being based on credit cards? Most savvy people I know use credit cards wherever possible because of the no-liability fraud protections that are not present in debit transactions. Clearly, Square users are younger and savvier than the general population. No way should anyone use bank account-based payments on a mobile device that could be stolen/hacked/lost because you're not going to get the money back that is fradulently charged. 2) Do you really want to have a shopping experience where store cashiers and other customers standing around know your name? Most people I know would prefer to remain more anonymous than that. 3) Where is the verification of customer payment (e.g. signature on CC receipt)? What happens when there are customer chargebacks? 4) Is it really that hard to pull out and use a credit card? I'm all for improving the current payments environment where a few major companies (Visa, MC, AMEX) dominate and as such, are able to extract large fees from merchants (which get passed along to consumers), but I don't see Square (or anyone else) as having found the answer yet. Their attempts seem to be more "cool to have" and technologically impressive than actually solving the underlying inefficiencies in the payments industry. And frankly, the major credit card companies are going to come out with their own NFC apps at some point and if Square is still relevant, they'll be just another player in the oligopoly (but still dependent on the others' back-end processing component). |