Jack Dorsey’s Square was unveiled last December as an innovative way to let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone.
Since then, Square, which has been in limited beta, has been used in a variety of use cases. E.g. philanthopic organization charity:water recently used Square at the SXSW festival to collect donations.
A local flower cart in San Francisco is using Square to take payments from customers. Denim, a jeans store in New York is using Square to take payments from shoppers. We even used Square at this year’s Crunchies to raise money for the UCSF Foundation.
Here’s how Square works: A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection. The device is compatible with both the iPhone and Android. It’s similar in some ways to PayPal, but anyone can now accept physical credit card payments, too. With no contracts or monthly fees. People are sent receipts by text and email. If you haven’t seen Square in action, check out this video.
And now, a new use case has popped up for Square: political fundraising.
Square is currently being used in two campaigns. Silicon Valley VC Josh Becker, who is running for state assembly in California’s 21st district, has been using Square at fundraising events. And lawyer Reshma Saujani, who is running for Congress in New York’s 14th district, is using Square at campaign fundraising events, including at an event in San Francisco on Friday.
Square is ideal for taking money at political fundraisers for several reasons.
Currently, if you want to donate money at a fundraising event, you often have to fill out a form and hand over a check or cash at the event. If you don’t have your checkbook or cash handy (which, many of us don’t), credit cards are the only option. You can write down your credit card number and info for fundraisers to charge at a later date, but you have to trust that the fundraiser keeps track of that information and paper.
With Square, there is both a convenience added for both the payee and fundraiser. The donation is instantly processed, and Square will send the receipt via SMS or email to the payee. Of course, political contributions and donations are a little more complicated because of the reporting requirements associated with donations.
For many types of donations, you need to take the donator’s name, occupation, address, and other information. Currently Square doesn’t allow users to input all of this information but Dorsey says that they are releasing Square’s API to allow fundraisers to build additional applications on top of Square, where they could input all of the necessary data. Once this is enabled, Square will allows fundraisers to eliminate paper collection and payments all together.
Dorsey says he’s already getting significant interest from politicians and political candidates across the country, but because Square is in limited beta, is being selective about how the service is distributed. Dorsey expects Square to be open to the public sometime in the next few months.
Valued at $40 million even before launch, Square is off to an impressive start. And technology’s most notable investors and leaders seem to think so as well.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, investor Ron Conway, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Digg creator Kevin Rose, investor Esther Dyson and a host of others have invested in Square. The company also raised funding from Khosla Ventures.
Is it actually impressive that two political fundraisers are using Square? Almost with any new product there will be some people that try it out. This means nothing.
What best way to promote your product, than to use it on a political related PR stunt.. Mr. Dorsey sure is the founder of Twitter!
Squareup is something that should have been done years ago, finally its on the way for a skyrocketing release.
The only caveats here is will its availability only be hindered by iPhone only? Hopefully that’s not the case.
See the detailed square-up review: http://bit.ly/squareup-by-jack-dorsey-best-or-worst
If the hardware/network bank rates are as suggested, we can soon have street buskers, coffee house poets, local bands, anyone or any group accepting SQUARE (or paypal bump) payments.
In the future, everyone will be an entrepreneur!
interesting how it will end someday???
I remember how I had to pay my landlord via check, and how much I hated writing them (they just feel so archaic. In most cases, writing a check would be the only handwriting exercise I would get in a month).
With square, someone like my landlord could just accept payments through my CC. And that would be wonderful – both for me, and for him. He saves a trip to the bank to get the checks cashed, and I save on signing my name
Not really. It means you have to visit your landlord every month in order to get your card changed? Why would anyone want to do that?
have you heard about bank-to-bank transfers?
I’d love to have a Square based donation application. For example, our local volunteer fire department is a registered non-profit. Most of our funding comes from donations. We’re in a rural area that has excellent AT&T coverage. Being able to accept credit cards for donations at our fundraising events would be GREAT!
The denim store in New York is called Self Edge.
Why another post on square? Verifone’s service is already live and Bump seems to be a vastly superior service.
Worse, techcrunch keeps linking to the square promotional commercial …
Reshma Saujani has The Innovation Platform.
Wow, a lobbyist’s dream !
Thats nice , a SQUARE via mobile !!
i think no people go to use this . that is funny. like Japanese people inert mobile into shoes. not useful