Roger Fingas
Mobile payments service Square announced on Monday that businesses can begin accepting payments sent via Square Cash, an iPhone and Android app previously aimed exclusively at person-to-person transfers.
Although regular users still won't be charged for transactions, any businesses accepting Square Cash will owe a 1.5 percent processing fee, according to the New York Times. Some rival peer-to-peer apps, like PayPal's Venmo, don't charge any fees, but the amount is still below the 2 to 3 percent Square normally charges for credit and debit card transactions.
Square told the Times that Cash has been fairly successful so far, processing over $1 billion in transactions annually.
One trait separating Square Cash from its rivals is the concept of a "$Cashtag," a short Twitter-like handle used to accept funds. That can potentially make payments simpler for Cash users, who can also make payments via cash.me if they don't have their phone nearby.
The launch comes amid growing competition in the mobile payments arena, spurred largely by the US introduction of Apple Pay in October. Square's main competition though is likely PayPal, which continues to dominate the mobile payments industry.
Christine McKee
Thomas Sibilly
Marko Zivkovic
7 Comments
At least it's not called "Square Pay"
Nice!
Just to brag, my company just took over their old building ;)
I thought that Apple might have bought Square at one time, but I guess not, now.
More competition is good. Bring it on!! I doubt it will go very far.
Dammit, this is what I've wanted Apple Pay to do. Person-to-person private payments a la Bitcoin (versus the traditional bank to bank electronic funds transfer).