So say you’re a small business that has so far stuck to cash-only transactions. They’re quick, easy, and there are no fees involved. What you may not realizes is that you are alienating the increasingly large percentage of your target audience that carry a credit card and very little cash (myself included). But accepting credit cards is a hassle, right? The equipment is bulky and costs hundreds of dollars up front, plus the fees are outrageous! Well my friend, that could all soon change.

Square is a company co-founded by Jack Dorsey (of Twitter fame) and Jim McKelvey, a glass artist and glass art instructor from St Louis. As the story goes, Jim was working in his studio and was tired of losing sales to people who did not have cash on-hand to make purchase so he teamed up with his techie friend Jack. Their sole purpose in this endeavor was to make credit card transactions as painless as possible. Together they came up with a process that streamlined how credit card transactions were performed and managed to reduce the high overhead fees.

Touted as the perfect supplement for a small or mobile business, all you need is a small attachment connected to one of the supported mobile devices and you are good to go! After you install and activate the app, you simply enter an amount along with an optional note, swipe the card, have the customer click Authorize and sign (using a fingertip), and Square will take care of billing the customer and depositing the money in your account. A receipt can be emailed to the customer with a GPS-mapped location of where transaction took place. It also includes several nice bells and whistles including the ability to manually enter credit card numbers, handle cash transactions, and automatically calculate tips.

One of the biggest selling points is cost. Up-front, the merchant pays absolutely nothing! A Square account and the card-scanning device are completely free. The fee per transaction is 15 cents plus 2.75% for swiped card transactions or 3.5% for typed-in card transactions. There are no contracts to sign, no monthly fees and no hidden costs. Additionally, all transactions are processed nightly as opposed to the monthly batch transactions of traditional credit card processors. This enables anyone from big business down to a sole proprietor to be able to start accepting credit cards immediately quickly and easily. Accepting credit cards could not be easier!

Here is a vid of Kevin Rose showing the product in action:

From my perspective, the concept is pretty ingenious! The system excels in its simplicity and obviously has widespread application possibilities from flea markets and road-side vendors to freelancers and mom and pop shops. My only concern is from the security perspective. With the dependency of an external device, how easy could it be for someone of malicious intent to create a similar looking device that also stored credit card data? I’m sure Square takes security as a top priority, but with the prevalence of jailbroken phones and home brew apps, I would be a bit wary of allowing someone to swipe my credit card on their iPhone. Of course, that may just be naive paranoia. I’m sure there is just as much risk, if not more, in handing a waiter my credit card when paying for dinner. Truth be told, I ‘m surprised more of these systems haven’t hit the market yet. Let me know what you guys think!

Square is officially live in production on the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Nexus One, Droid, and Incredible, with other devices coming soon.  If you want to check it out you can download the app here.

Fast Company – Square Brings Credit Card Swiping to the Mobile Masses, Starting Today
Mashable – Credit Card Scanner Square Comes to iPhone
Engadget – Square mobile payment system goes live on iPhone, iPad, and Android this week (video)
ReadWriteWeb – Even The Babysitter Takes Credit Cards With Square
gigaom – Jack Dorsey on Square, How It Works & Why It Disrupts

Morning everyone, it’s been an interesting week and I’ve torn myself away from my copies of Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 in order to dig through some news. Have a video to show today as well, gotta say it can be just a tad creepy but you’ll understand soon enough. Let’s get straight to this shall we?

Amidst the news of ThePirateBay shutting down their tracker in favor of another service and studies on how cell phone usage increases your chance to get hit by a car (don’t ask, not worth it), I found a small little piece about Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen. It seems Paul was recently diagnosed with cancer. From the news report, it is stated he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma which is a type that is known to be very fast acting but it also responds well to the usual chemotherapy treatment. Best of luck in your recovery, Paul Allen.

For you Android owners out there, one of the issues plaguing this device has been fixed in a silent update released by Motorola. No, it isn’t the reported speaker problems but rather the auto-focus problems the built in camera was having. The guys over at Engadget tested it out with their devices and can confirm the issue has officially been resolved so rejoice Android owners, no more blurry pictures. Well, at least no more need to manually get a good focus.

An interesting claim was made by the company behind the OnLive cloud gaming service. It seems they are convinced they can get their service working on a device as small as the iPhone. Granted that trying to play a PC style game on a touch screen mobile device isn’t going to translate pretty well, it was said initial plans for the iPhone variant were so OnLive users can track their friends and eventually they would bring some games tailored to mobile devices. Pretty cool for iPhone users, I’m still waiting for my chance to test out the service on my laptop.

Now, just because I can’t resist mentioning this after reading the headline. In fact, I will say only a few words with the next sentence and I want you to let your imaginations run a bit before continuing. Bomb-proof wallpaper. Now think on that for a bit, I’ll go grab a coffee.

Right, now to explain. X-Flex wallpaper is made of kevlar and elastic polymer. In a demo video of it, the stuff resisted a wrecking ball trying to break through a concrete wall. Pretty impressive really, and naturally the military is looking into using this new wallpaper to reinforce their bases. Now I’m going to quickly pull away from this topic before I make a joke about interior decorating.

So comes the time for you to shift uncomfortably in your seats while watching what is obviously corporate mandated dance moves. Why is it every time Microsoft tries to do something to connect with people it comes off a tad bit creepy?

With that, I sign off and head back to Renaissance Italy to cap some people and probably senselessly beat up guards for amusement in Assassin’s Creed 2. Enjoy your week, my readers, and I’ll see you next Tuesday.