Square launches new payment device for credit and mobile payments

Square Terminal
Square

• Square launched a new product on Thursday: the Square
  Terminal, which is a portable, all-in-one card processing
  device.
• Square has long focused on helping businesses take
  credit card payments — most famously with its original
  smartphone dongle, but also with touchscreen-based cash
  registers. 
• The company says that it makes it easy for businesses
  to put cash registers everywhere: A restaurant could put one in
  every booth; a salon could put one at every chair.
• An exec says that Square wanted to make something like
  this since day one, but focused on the dongles to spread the
  word first.

Going to the store and paying can
be a clunky process, and more often than not, stores use slow,
outdated brick-like credit card readers with tiny screens.

Square,
the $30 billion mobile payments company helmed by Jack Dorsey,
wants to change all this. On Thursday, it launched Square
Terminal, a payments terminal that’s small and portable, accepts
all forms of payments quickly, and still does everything
traditional cash registers do, like ring up sales and print out
receipts.

The company is most famous for
its $10 smartphone dongle, which made it easy for anyone,
anywhere, to start taking credit card payments. After that,
Square moved into making svelte, futuristic cash registers. This
payment terminal is somewhere in the middle — portable like
a smartphone, but with the features of a full
register. 

“Payment terminals have been
around forever,” Jesse Dorogusker, head of hardware at Square,
tells Business Insider. “The logical response would be to [create
one] at the beginning of Square, but we had to work on getting
card acceptance into as many people’s hands as possible. That’s
the problem we solved first.”

Also, at its smaller size, users
can easily carry around the terminal on the go, or discreetly
place it in public view. For example, at a restaurant, a waiter
can let customers pay directly at the table, instead of customers
waiting for their receipt. Or, at a store, a salesperson can
finish the deal with a customer directly on the spot.

In addition to supporting chip
cards and swipe cards both, the Square Terminal accepts mobile
payments like Apple Pay and Google Pay, can connect to Wi-Fi, and
has a wired networking port built in. There’s a dashboard feature
for businesses to track their sales. Users can also see exactly
what they’re paying for on the screen.

“There’s a lot more rich
interaction with the buyer, show them what they’re being rung up
for,” Dorogusker said.

Square Terminal
Square