Last October I mentioned the Square iPhone payment system, a new start up business from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. In December they started a live customer trial and they recently announced that they are taking signups for their pilot programme.

Square allows anyone with a mobile device (currently only iPhone and the iPod touch are supported) and the square dongle to accept credit card payments. The square dongle is a small magnetic reader that plugs into the headphone jack of the mobile device. Once a card is swiped the dongle reads the card and converts the data to an audio signal. This audio signal is then picked up by the microphone and routed to the square software. From here the data is encrypted and sent the the payment network for approval. Instant confirmation of the payment is displayed on the device and also sent to both parties via SMS or email. The following video from Square gives an introduction to the system.



The video highlights what I feel are the two most important selling points of the square system:

Target Audience - it is aimed at both merchants and consumers, anyone can accept payments.

Simplicity - Easy to setup, there are no contracts, no monthly fees and you can start accepting payments immediately.

It is still early days for SquareUp but if they can live up to the claims on their website and in the video above then I expect they will present a challenge to the major players in mobile and online payments.

Dave

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Some good news in a time of economic slowdown stories, following on from their announcement of a record month for new businesses signing up to use their service, Realex Payments have announced record-breaking value of monthly payments processed by their systems in January.

Realex have processed in excess of €781m worth of payments in January 2010. This represents a growth of 45% over the same period in 2009. January is always a strong month for Online Payments and this year in particular has been partly driven by an upsurge in charitable payments processed as a result of the Haitian Earthquake Disaster.

Realex have provided further details on these figures indicating that the payment values processed by Irish businesses grew by 19%, values processed by the UK market grew by 112% and international values 55%. At a time when so much media is focused on the gloom of economic slowdown it is a testament to the strength of ecommerce markets and their continuing importance to economies. Realex are setting a powerful example for Irish businesses by their continued success in other markets and increased profitability.

Dave

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