Back in September this year when Twitter founder and inventor Jack Dorsey left the company, to a work on a new project, everyone was skeptical at best when he said “I came back to St. Louis to find the next thing, and I found it.” Obviously we are aware of the Genius of a person that Jack is, so expectations are quite high.
Well today he’s revealed this next big thing to world as Square. The idea – let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone. 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.
Even before launch Square is now valued at $40 Million with already $10 Million in Venture Capital Backing. By the looks of it, Square is a bold entry into this huge market of physical payments. “What PayPal was to eBay, Square is to the real world,” said one person close to the company.
The Big credit card companies Visa, Mastercard and American Express are already on board with Square to take credit card payments. Square has already won the attention of the blogosphere, and we will have to wait and watch to see if Square becomes the next big thing.
Enough of the talk, lets have a look at what Square looks like…
If the security risks faced by credit card users weren’t already enough, now the security information that is stored in a magnetic strip behind the card can be hacked and be used for malicious purposes. Hacking the data on the magnetic strip so far has been unsuccessful but RFID security guru Adam Laurie has come up with a test program named CHaP.py, specifically designed to read the chip and PIN credit cards that comply with the EMV standard.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the EMV Standard :
The EMV is a standard for interoperation of IC cards (“Chip cards”) and IC capable POS terminals and ATM’s, for authenticating credit and debit card payments. The name EMV comes from the initial letters of Europay, MasterCard and VISA, the three companies which originally cooperated to develop the standard. It defines the interaction at the physical, electrical, data and application levels between IC cards and IC card processing devices for financial transactions
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