square’s New Contactless Card Reader helps Apple Pay

To make its product appropriate with chip-based playing cards and digital wallets, sq. has redesigned its bank card reader.

via Neal Ungerleider

November 23, 2015

only a week after its initial public offering, cellular payments company sq. is unveiling its new card reader, which replaces the iconic mini-sq. established on top of a phone or iPad with a bulkier, standalone chip card-pleasant reader. the brand new square hardware is suitable with Apple Pay and Android Pay as neatly, and might be rolling out to buyers this week.

The chip card-friendly square reader will retail for $forty nine, though at Apple’s WWDC convention this earlier spring, square pledged to give away 250,000 readers for free.

in line with a press liberate, buyers can at present are trying the new square reader at Chicago’s Honey Butter Fried chicken, Philz espresso in San Francisco, St. Louis’s Sump espresso, and Cafe Grumpy in ny. The conspicuous naming of eating places and coffee shops isn’t any accident: sq. believes food service is a tremendous increase house, and the corporate deals custom-made level of sale (POS) software that generates kitchen tickets and extra.

final week, sq. CEO Jack Dorsey hinted that sq. may just reintroduce its sq. pockets product, which the company pulled ultimate 12 months after it didn’t take off. sq. sees the transition from traditional playing cards to chip-based cardsas a probably large increase house as a result of it requires tens of heaps of small businesses throughout the united states to improve their POS programs. but it surely’s still uncertain how lengthy sq. and Apple will continue to work collectively on payments tech: Apple is reportedly working on a peer-to-peer Venmo competitor, because of this it may challenge square sooner or later.