Square appears to be preparing to allow merchants with Android devices to accept “Tap to Pay” contactless NFC payments without a dedicated card reader.
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Square is moving into the world of in-app purchases with a new SDK for Android, iOS, and Flutter that will allow app developers to easily accept payments in a secure and consistent way.
Google Search and Google Maps are certainly some of the top ways that restaurants and small businesses are discovered. To make it easier for customers to book appointments with these companies, Google launched Reserve with Google last year. Today, Reserve with Google is expanding to include simple Square Appointments support.
Square is a huge deal for small businesses, as the popular credit card reader makes it easy and inexpensive to accept credit card payments. Now, Square is extending that functionality to Chromebooks.
Snapchat today announced a new service, in partnership with mobile-payment service Square, dubbed Snapcash. The new feature allows Snapchat users to quickly and easily send payments to one another. Users can do so by simply swiping right to chat on the main screen in Snapchat and then entering a dollar amount. The money will go directly from one user’s bank account to another.
Today, Square announced a new version of its popular mobile payment system that will support EMV chipped credit cards. EMV is a joint effort from MasterCard and Visa to help improve security credit and debit card transactions and is set to become a standard in the US by October 2015. In addition to EMV-equipped credit cards, the new version of Square’s payment system will still feature support for legacy magnetic strips, so customers will still have the option to swipe and sign.
Square has just launched a new service called Square Cash, which allows quick money transfers between any two parties using through an email. Contrary to what you might be expecting, you don’t need to sign up or get all of your friends onto Square Cash to share funds. Instead, you just need to link a debit card to your account.
Earlier this week Google confirmed that its head of Google Wallet will leave later this year, and today AllThingsD reports that the company is scrapping its plans for a physical credit card that would accompany its mobile payment service.
Google CEO Larry Page reportedly canned the physical card just last week after being dissatisfied with its reliability due to glitches.
The company was reportedly preparing to demo the physical card, which featured the colorful Google Wallet “W” branding, at Google I/O next week, so it is interesting that this report is surfacing so suddenly.
Larry Page reportedly cited more innovative approaches to mobile commerce from startups like Square, which seems to have solidified his decision to shred the company’s plans for a physical Google Wallet credit card.
After reports last year that Google Wallet’s co-founding engineer Rob von Behren had left the company to join competitor Square, Google today confirmed it has now lost another important employee related to its mobile payment efforts.
Google provided the following statement to VentureBeat, confirming that Osama Bedier, who was up until today chief of the company’s Google Wallet business, will be leaving the company “this year to pursue other opportunities.” Bedier joined Google back in 2011 after leaving eBay.
“We can confirm that Osama Bedier has decided to leave Google this year to pursue other opportunities,” said spokesman Nate Tyler. “He’s achieved a lot during his time here and we wish him all the best in his next endeavor. “
Google made a point of noting that it remains committed to making payments easier for users despite Bedier’s departure:
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