What Will iPhones Be Able To Do Next?!

With the high sucess of Twitter, it’s easy to see why the founders are using their new resources to fry even bigger fish – and what could be bigger than the financial industry? Jim McKelvey (his former boss), has launched ‘Square’, the first major development in online purchasing since Paypal.

Square is providing an easy method of card payment all the time, for a nominal charge anyone can have the privilege of swiping their credit card anywhere they may be….. Walking in the street to in the bathtub! The SmartSwipe system also connects to Windows PCs via the USB port and is supposed to work perfectly with 98% of all online retailers. (that’s a pretty hefty figure!) But we can only ever assume that this application will only ever get so far, for the average consumer anyway. Why and where would they feel the need to use it?

It does however help with the tedious task of typing in the long 16 digit number every time, a simple swipe and signature on your iPhone will do the trick!

According to Dorsey, his goal is a little more far-reaching. He states “everyone has this little plastic device in their pocket today, which is a payment card, credit card, debit card or pre-paid card, and they’re using them everywhere”.

It only takes 60 seconds to set up and pay using the new square app. All it requires is a card-reading dongle be added by the phone’s audio input and then the transaction is confirmed by a signature ‘drawn’ on the phone. They have even gone so far as to give 1cent of every payment to a charity of the user’s choice. What’s that? You don’t have an iPhone? It doesn’t matter the application also works on an iPod Touch with the data transmitted through encrypted wireless. As for the fact that the app works through you audio jack – theoretically it should soon work with any phone!

Other than the consumers and merchants, the banking sector should also benefit with an increase in credit card use. This should see a rise in low rate credit cards and other offers to try and stay competitive.

While Jack Dorsey hit the homerun by allowing people to post 140 character messages on the Internet, it could be Square that provides a more significant legacy.