These days, there is not just one outlet to let everybody know everything about a person’s whereabouts and goings-on, but rather several, and Jack Dorsey is the visionary behind one of the most held-high of those outlets, Twitter. In an era where people thrive on delving deeper and deeper into each other’s personal lives, there exist few secrets among the social networking, regardless of social stature.
The 34-year old entrepreneur has taken his vision from the meeting of social minds and has applied it to the new social platform, Square, but this time it serves as a way to simplify things in a business scenario and has the ability to, once again, revolutionize the way people go about doing the most fundamental of tasks.
Square’s main focus is to allow any individual, merchant or business to accept credit card payments instantly through any mobile device without the monthly fees, contracts or required merchant accounts, only furthering the need for everyone to climb aboard the recent trains of technology.
The Los Angeles Times notes that 90% of Americans carry credit cards, but more than 27 million businesses don’t allow them. Square could very well be the machine that moves cash-only stores into the undeniable future of innovation.
Square will begin to truly affect the smartphone and tablet world, because now everybody, whether starving artist, mobile coffee shop barista, high-end clothing shop owner or CEO of a futuristic invention, can sell their product to anybody, anywhere at anytime.
Dorsey is known as one of the original programmers and former CEO of Twitter, an idea stemmed from working with dispatch in which he had high hopes for the startup to be used as a simple, real-time information highway. Since his departure from his CEO chair, Dorsey has gone on to provide the world with his newest creation, an idea that is more likely to change the face of the finance world, as opposed to your daily gossip.
Dorsey’s Square mails each person who downloads the free application a free card reader as well, whether the person is looking to sell handmade jewelry or some old baseball cards found collecting dust in the attic. In addition, the camera phones allow users to take photos of the items being sold, sign off on the card and the Internet capabilities allow for receipts to travel to the user’s email.
The great thing about Square is that the card reader works through the audio port on its devices, so Square is not limited to just smartphones, but also has the ability to work on laptops, desktops and virtually any mobile device, especially the new iPads, which are rapidly flourishing.
Dorsey was quoted, “Our main focus is not just to speak to iPhone or iPod Touch users, but to allow one to take payments from any mobile device.”
Since this seems too easy to be true, there has been skepticism with how safe the practices are with Square. The original ideas of taking pictures of the credit cards to complete transactions were thrown out, along with the any other fraudulent or insecure practices. Dorsey assures people that Square meets all the safety regulations and practices required.
Although Square is new to our eyes, the application has been tracked as gathering nearly 100,000 merchants each month and approximately $2 million in transactions daily, making Dorsey’s newborn baby not such an illusion after all.
The application is also taking the extra step towards societal consciousness. A penny per Square transaction goes to Charity Water, and as people slowly all gather toward Square, those contributions will become a considerable amount.
The future of Square may be likely to bring some surprises as this new wave of technology spreads and we become even more of a paperless society, but the biggest surprise could very well be how quickly everybody catches on.
These encompass more than 100 costumes from films released in 2011. Indeed a gown from last year’s winner, Alice in Wonderland, greets visitors entering the galleries.
