
Square Now Processing $1 Million In Mobile Payments Per Day - pitdesi
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/02/square-now-processing-1-million-in-mobile-payments-per-day/
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danac
Mobile payments have been around in Africa for years, mainly because there's
no legacy systems to compete with, and the lack of a solid banking/payment
processing industry has made growth occur unopposed.

Whereas the incumbent players in North America (most credit card and payment
processing juggernauts) will most likely put up more of a fight against
systems like Square.

There's a recent podcast about the mobile payment industry
([http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/02/spark-139-february-27-march-...](http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/02/spark-139-february-27-march-2-2011/)),
check out the part about Mobile money in Kenya, and the Smartphone wallet.

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trafficlight
Congratulations! The Square reader is one of the coolest things. I hope they
come out with an API soon. I'd love to use square as my website's payment
processor.

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cloudwalking
Out of curiosity, why would they do this? It'd be more expensive (you think
any deals they have with CC companies will carry through to a new and crowded
market?) and they'd have a lot of competitors.

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niketdesai
One reason I can think of is high volume small transactions. Since the fee is
flat percentage companies could get around the flat rate. This is problematic
in settings where you are selling items for 1 or 2 dollars and the 15/30 cent
fees eat up your margins.

I'm not entirely sure what the rates are for GC/Paypal but I'm sure you could
manage a merchant account that gives you as good of a deal and is optimized
for the web.

For instance, how many people will buy through "Square" online when they are
so familiar with PayPal.

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greattypo
Huge congrats to the Square team on the milestone, though I suspect they've
only scratched the surface.

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lowglow
It's just a matter of time before apple rolls out a platform for payments.

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thewordpainter
I'll go one step further and speculate that it's just a matter of time before
Apple acquires Square as their payment platform moving forward (showcase at
iPad 2 event was serious pub...)

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lowglow
I guess they acquire more than I thought they did :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple)

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oscardelben
From the square website I can't understand if square can be used by
international users. There's nothing about that in the faq so I created my
account but now I'm not able to create a new identity as it asks for a us
address.

Edit: apparently they're working on it, great.

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Wilduck
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when setting up an online business that accepts
credit cards, you need a merchant account. Do you need something similar with
Square? Or do they get around this somehow by keeping your funds in a paypal
like account?

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mikesaraf
Square bypasses that, they deposit into the bank account every business day.
There are some exceptions for larger transactions.

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cloudwalking
Daily Money: 1M Daily Revenue (@ 2.75%): 27.5K Yearly Gross: ~11M Employees:
~60 (about 180K yearly revenue per head!) Avg. Salary (Est.): 75K Yearly
Salary (Est.): 4.5M

Assuming their other costs don't exceed $6M/yr, they're ALREADY profitable.
Pretty slick. You just got Dorsey'd.

[http://niketdesai.tumblr.com/post/3613418817/square-is-
actua...](http://niketdesai.tumblr.com/post/3613418817/square-is-actually-hip-
and-probably-profitable)

~~~
jorgeortiz85
I'm pretty sure most of their 2.75% take is eaten up in fees.

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jemka
You're absolutely right. The processor (in this case Square) takes the
smallest portion of the 2.75% with Visa/Mastercard taking the second highest,
and the largest portion (by a large margin) going to the issuing bank.

Here's an illustration:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Gao-
repor...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Gao-report-on-
interchange.gif)

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pitdesi
I'd love to see demographics on that... like who is using square - breakdown
of average transaction size, merchant size, etc.

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riledhel
I think people would _pay_ for that as well!

