

Video: Jack Dorsey Talks Square And I Buy Him Coffee With It - themichael
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/01/jack-dorsey-square/

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teilo
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.

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TheSOB88
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.

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teilo
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.

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jazzychad
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.

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

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freakwit
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.

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mr_justin
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.

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tiffani
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.

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

