Jack Dorsey, the founder/Chairman of Twitter has unveiled Square, his new start-up. The idea: anyone with a mobile phone can accept credit card payments. (Gee...that sounds familiar...who else came up with that idea many many moons ago?)



Square makes a small "square" device that plugs into any gadget with an audio input jack, (Gee...that sounds familiar, our device plugs into any device with an audio input jack) including an iPhone or iPod Touch, and turns the device into a credit card machine. (Gee...that sounds familiar...except that ours does PIN based transactions for debit and prepaid as well thus providing two factor authentication)

What's unfamiliar, (because it's not talked about in any of the articles I've read) is the security of the device. How does the "Square" handle the cardholder information.



I'm checking on that now and will do a follow-up piece after learning more. 



What I do know, thus far...Buzz is obviously much more important that an actual product, otherwise HomeATM would have seen this type of buzz over it's product in 2008 and all during 2009.  The good news,is that the people who scoffed at the idea of attaching a hardware device to phone are now sucking up to this buzz.



Seriously, if it wasn't the Twitter founder doing this, the coverage would not be anywhere near what it is. 



But, it is what it is.  Which brings up the question... exactly what is that? 

• It cannot do PIN based transactions,whereas the HomeATM device can
  
  
  
  


• It's not PCI certified whereas the HomeATM device is
  
  
  
  


• Because of the size, I would venture a guess that there will be a ton of misreads because of the short throw.  (the length of the device as compared to the length of the magnetic stripe) My understanding is that Magento has already discontinued one of their mag-stripe readers because of that exact problem.
  
  
  
  


• Tons of security questions should be posed.  What type of encryption does it use?
  
  
  
  


• How sturdy is it?  Doesn't look very strong.  (see below)
  
  
  
  


• How long does a transaction take?  We use patent pending ultra-fast data packets.
  
  
  
  


• It needs software, ours doesn't.  (software bad...hardware good)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

More on this later.  Just wanted to get something up on the blog acknowledging the new Twitter Founders' startup.  My question is when the realization sets in that it may need some security improvements...will the Square 2 be a result of going back to Square One? 

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