Have you heard of Square, the new payment service from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey? Square is a new payment system which allows regular people to accept physical credit card payments by simply using their mobile phone.
In a way, it appears to be very much like PayPal which allows people without merchant account to accept credit card payments from others. But the ability to accept credit card payments through PayPal is limited to online transactions. That is not the case with Square.
Square allows its users to accept a physical credit card payment, which is something you cannot do with PayPal. All it takes is a little piece of hardware that you plug into the audio jack of your phone and you could process credit card payments quickly and easily.
A huge bonus with Square is that there are no contracts to sign and no monthly fees. Anyone buying something from you can have the receipt sent to them via text or email.
Currently, Square is in limited release, and the only phones supported at launch are the iPhone and the latest Android phone. Expect this to spread quickly to other phone models like wildfire.
Should PayPal be worried about Square? They would be fools not to! Square is looking to have all the capabilities that PayPal does, but adding the ability for Joe Everyman to accept payments in person straight from their phone is going to change the way business is done for many people.
It should be interesting to see what PayPal does in the near future to counter the coming of Square.