

Square Market - robbiet480
http://squareup.com/market

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staunch
What would happen to Stripe if Square cloned their API and beat their pricing?
Now that they're online this seems like a distinct probability.

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erikpukinskis
I think if they go down that path, at some point Square becomes PayPal and is
crushed under the weight of trying to do too much.

Square has maintained a fairly narrow focus in terms of clients: small-scale
retail outlets. With Square Market they don't seem to be targeting Joe's Mail-
Order Bait Shop.... they're giving their existing storefronts a way to sell
their stuff online.

I think both Square and Stripe are examples of what great things can come when
you take on a fairly narrow slice of the payments market. And PayPal is
becoming the cautionary tale of what happens when you try to be everything to
all people.

I suspect Stripe will be fine.

~~~
awwstn
Seeing that Square recently launched a p2p payment system, I disagree with you
that Square plans to stay within their narrow slice of the market. I think it
would look much more like PayPal (a "Pay with Square" button) than Stripe, but
who knows.

I'm sure Stripe, Braintree, Venmo, PayPal and the others are paying very close
attention to Square.

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codex
IIRC, Square already does around 10% of PayPal's transaction volume, which is
impressive. Of course, Square is mostly offline and PayPal is mostly online--
and here we see the beginnings of the inevitable conflict. At last, they begin
the fight to enter PayPal's core market, using their offline clout in POS to
enter online payments using existing brick and mortar stores for fulfillment.
Google, just buy Square already.

~~~
tr4656
Would Google buy Square? I doubt Google really wants to get into the offline
payment market. If Google really want to fight Paypal as alternative online
payment platform, it would be better for Google to buy Stripe.

~~~
codex
Stripe is nothing--just a faster horse. PayPal and Square (and Google and
Apple) ultimately aim to replace the credit card itself. That's the prize.
Square is attacking from the B&M merchant POS side and consumer to consumer
email payments, Apple from iTunes and mobile, Google from mobile and web
properties, and PayPal from online merchants and consumer (though, in all
honesty, I see so little innovation coming from PayPal I sometimes wonder if
they see what's coming). I suspect the key is to win the consumer by
bootstrapping with physical merchants, so I give the odds to Square, and to a
lesser extent Google and Apple.

Apple and Amazon are other potential suitors for Square, but the company is
kicking so much ass I doubt they'll sell. For all HN likes to spin
acquisitions as victories, 95% of the time they are the final denouement of a
defeated startup. When a startup is doing well, ambition takes over and
selling is usually out of the question.

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callmeed
This is beautiful but part of me wonders if this is like the prototype/MVP
sites we see with really great photography of good looking people. How do you
keep the presentation quality high at scale? How do you keep visitors from
drowning in a sea of "me too" items like Etsy?

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nedwin
Definitely a challenge for them but Airbnb seem to have done fairly well here.

~~~
greghinch
Yes, by hiring a legion of professional photographers and offering their
services for free. That's a hard model to sustain/emulate

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icelancer
Oh my god. I was just commenting in a Stripe thread about how insane it was
that Square wasn't online and that they would capture tons of revenue if they
would just stop being boneheaded and expose their API.

This isn't exactly that, but in a lot of respects, it's better. Way better.

Yikes. I need to rethink how I am selling online.

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egypturnash
Oooh. I have to check what the charge is on my current online shop solution,
but it would be GREAT to have my online sales in the exact same database as my
convention sales.

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auston
One of the next possible steps for Square is definitely to enter the online
food ordering space. They have the perfect way to do so, iPhone/iPad app &
they take care of payment processing / disbursement. The amount of work they
would need to put in is negligible now that they have this ;)

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cocoflunchy
This works at every Starbucks in the US. It's going to be big, if my
estimation of the iPhone owners / Starbucks afficionados intersection is
remotely correct (and providing Starbucks advertises it in their physical
locations).

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mahmoudimus
This is a brilliant move by Square. This seems like the reverse-Milo.com
problem.

I'm very happy that more and more of these payment companies are embracing
marketplaces!

I, for one, want to see more marketplaces.

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templaedhel
This is an interesting move for Square, at least to me. When I think about the
future of square I saw them pushing out against more established POS systems
(with more deals like the Starbucks one).

This is a slightly different route, the main competitors seem to be etsy.

While in reality they're trying to landgrab as much payment related market as
possible, and the two approaches are slightly related, in my mind I'm
interested to see what they become known for.

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jelled
Site looks good. I just bought one of these
[https://squareup.com/market/dodocase-2/sage-canvas-
leather-w...](https://squareup.com/market/dodocase-2/sage-canvas-leather-
wallet-sleeve-for-samsung-galaxy-s-nexus-htc-one). Everything was seamless
except I couldn't figure out how to sign up for an account without having a
square reader shipped to me.

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magsafe
The design, typography, layout and mobile-friendliness are indeed brilliant.
The simple white background and lack of navigation clutter really put the
focus on the items being sold. Check out this photographer's store:
[https://squareup.com/market/mel-ashar-
photography](https://squareup.com/market/mel-ashar-photography). Great job
Square!

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subpixel
As well-executed as this marketplace is, I believe it's more of a prototype
than a major new initiative.

Square-powered online payments is the endgame here. Today, on the Square
marketplace. Tomorrow, on your own site, and in other marketplaces.

The competition is not other marketplaces and e-commerce software tools, but
Stripe, PayPal, and even Visa/Mastercard.

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foobarbazqux
It seems like the pitch to consumers here is that you can shop at small and
local businesses with your phone. Every business owner I've ever spoken to
prefers cash for in-person payments if possible, because credit card
processors take around 3% of each transaction. I imagine the total fees for
paying with an app are even higher.

~~~
dmor
From the Square website: "Pay just 2.75% per swipe for all major credit cards
or a flat monthly $275. No other fees—so you know exactly what you pay."

~~~
rdl
But there's a $21000/mo maximum for the $275/mo, after which it is 2.75% for
additional swipes. Purchases >$400 also are charged at 2.75% for all volumes.

So, it's as low as 1.3% if you do exactly $21000/mo in sales. At $10k, it's
break-even. Below $10k, it's worse than 2.75%. Between $10k and $21k it gets
better, and gets worse past $21k. (Since they include Amex, this would be
great for someone doing $21k/mo in Amex charges, though...I think only Costco
pays less for their Amex charges.)

Compared to running your own account (which is probably about 1.5% all-in for
big ticket sales), which clearly makes more sense at some volume ($50k-100k/mo
vs. Stripe, probably)

~~~
foobarbazqux
I read that as 2.75% below $10K, but I think hitting $10K in Square sales per
month is difficult if we (generously?) assume that's 10% of your customers, so
effectively it's like any other ~3% CC for a majority of small and local
businesses. It's good to hear it's not generally worse though, I guess they
thought about that.

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quackerhacker
I can not express the elation I have for Square _finally_ allowing online
transactions. Great complement to Coinbase on my next project!

I had one like a year ago and now they have a flat $275 per month fee that
applies to swiped and online. Definitely awesome!

EDIT: grammar

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ChrisNorstrom
Does anyone know if Square Market's shipping options have calculated shipping
according to weight AND box dimensions? The calendars I ship are $5 to Chicago
but $9 to California. Distance, weight, and dimensions are really important. I
can't do flat shipping charges. I refuse to over charge all my customers to
prevent losing money on shipping nor undercharging and eating into my profit
by $4 per order.

Nearly all the marketplaces I've tried out (except for ebay) have terrible
shipping options. It's 2013, everyone from USPS to FedEx to UPS have shipping
apis that do down-to-the-penny shipping rate calculations, yet none (edit: not
many of them) of the marketplaces and e-commerce stores take advantage of
them. Apparently they think we business owners are just shipping 5 oz
t-shirts.

Edit: MUST have weight + destination + box dimensions shipping calculations.
(wordpress e-commerce plugin is the only one I could find that does)

~~~
subpixel
You'd be way smarter to raise your price and offer free shipping. Especially
when what you sell is unique - it's not like shoppers will find it elsewhere
cheaper.

Online shoppers love free shipping, and shipping charges are a huge cause of
cart abandonment.

~~~
weisser
So true...

I wrote a guest post about this on Hypebot:
[http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/07/free-shipping-sex-
bee...](http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/07/free-shipping-sex-beer.html)

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aashaykumar92
Everything about this is beautiful. The idea, the UI, the timing, etc.

Furthermore, if you click around, it seems to be a higher end market. Is this
intentional or do you think these were the only businesses interested in
selling online?

~~~
jes5199
That's almost certainly intensional. Square is obsessive about making a high-
end impression whenever possible.

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jefftchan
Took me awhile to figure out this is U.S. only currently. I was confused for
ten minutes trying to figure out where the "Add to Cart" option is, until I
VPN'd in.

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lancewiggs
I can see a price, but no buy-now button without a login. And I see no reason
to ever login. This seems to contravene a lot about what we have learned about
ecommerce.

~~~
erikpukinskis
There is a "Check out as guest" option.

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tosh
This is just brilliant.

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gailees
This is HUGE

