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Whole Foods Adopts Square for iPad Cash Registers

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Apr 12, 2001
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Whole Foods has partnered with Square to deploy its iPad checkout system inside the grocery store chain at counters selling ready-to-consume products like pizza, coffee and sandwiches, supplementing the chain's traditional checkout lanes at the front of the store.

Reports TIME:

wholefoodsstore.jpeg
The company has signed a deal to put its iPad-based payment systems inside Whole Food Market grocers in the U.S., where they'll be used at counters that sell ready-to-consume products -- from pizza and sandwiches to coffee, beer and wine -- as a supplement to the conventional checkouts at the front of the store. Customers will be able to pay with credit and debit cards, cash and, in some locations, by using the Square Wallet smartphone app. The idea is to expedite things both for people making a quick purchase from one of these venues and for those who are at the checkouts with a cartful of groceries.
Click to expand...
It's unclear if Whole Foods will use the Square Stand cash register or some other iPad solution, but TIME says some locations will support the Square Wallet app.

The deal makes Whole Foods the second major retailer to roll out Square's technology. In 2012, Square and Starbucks formed a partnership that saw Square take over credit card processing at Starbucks stores in the U.S.

Article Link: Whole Foods Adopts Square for iPad Cash Registers
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/02/11/whole-foods-ipad-register/
AustinIllini

AustinIllini

macrumors G5
Oct 20, 2011
12,682
10,516
Austin, TX
MacRumors said:
[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]


Whole Foods has partnered with Square to deploy its iPad checkout system inside the grocery store chain at counters selling ready-to-consume products like pizza, coffee and sandwiches, supplementing the chain's traditional checkout lanes at the front of the store.

Reports TIME:

It's unclear if Whole Foods will use the Square Stand cash register or some other iPad solution, but TIME says some locations will support the Square Wallet app.

The deal makes Whole Foods the second major retailer to roll out Square's technology. In 2012, Square and Starbucks formed a partnership that saw Square take over credit card processing at Starbucks stores in the U.S.

Article Link: Whole Foods Adopts Square for iPad Cash Registers
Click to expand...

Whole Foods is like a religion in Austin. It's miserable. Hopefully this helps.
 
dontwalkhand

dontwalkhand

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And so one nail in the traditional POS system, more to go.

However it may be a step back, as instead of me swiping it, I have to hand my card to the clerk.
 
Blakjack

Blakjack

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Jun 23, 2009
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And to think, one phone started it all.

If you owned one in 2007, you just knew you were holding a piece of history.
 
M

MellowFuzz

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Just adding a pointless post to express my hatred of Whole Fascists - food shouldn't look like propaganda. Looking at it, you'd never guess it come from messy, muddy, varied nature. Also, the prepared-foods are utterly overrated and surprisingly dire.
 
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2457282

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I like the square system as an end user. From the retailer side, I also think that compared to traditional POS registers this will be cheaper for retailers. And emailing the receipts vs printing adds another level of savings plus being eco-friendly. Basically all good IMHO.
 
oneMadRssn

oneMadRssn

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Does square support a cash drawer? Is there even a cash drawer that is iOS compatible? Via 30-pin connector I would assume?

Swiping credit cards is cool and all, but it's not really a POS replacement without the ability to accept cash.
 
carjakester

carjakester

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Oct 21, 2013
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oneMadRssn said:
Does square support a cash drawer? Is there even a cash drawer that is iOS compatible? Via 30-pin connector I would assume?

Swiping credit cards is cool and all, but it's not really a POS replacement without the ability to accept cash.
Click to expand...

i believe that you enter the cash manually, and could get a normal drawer for cash.
 
bushido

bushido

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oneMadRssn said:
Swiping credit cards is cool and all, but it's not really a POS replacement without the ability to accept cash.
Click to expand...

random i just read a story today that the US is only now starting to implement Chip + PIN cards? i couldnt believe people are still "swiping and signing" seems so unsecure and 2001 to me
 
oneMadRssn

oneMadRssn

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bushido said:
random i just read a story today that the US is only now starting to implement Chip + PIN cards? i couldnt believe people are still "swiping and signing" seems so unsecure and 2001 to me
Click to expand...

Glad you pointed this out. I agree that it's insecure. How is a chip + pin more secure though? Most of the data breaches happen well after the transaction has occurred, where hackers steal the stored card data. Often that data is encrypted, and they also gain access to the key. I don't think any chip and pin really addresses this issue; though I could be mistaken.
 
M

MN7119

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Mar 7, 2011
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Are you being forced to shop at WF? Go get a life!!!!

MellowFuzz said:
Just adding a pointless post to express my hatred of Whole Fascists - food shouldn't look like propaganda. Looking at it, you'd never guess it come from messy, muddy, varied nature. Also, the prepared-foods are utterly overrated and surprisingly dire.
Click to expand...
 
bushido

bushido

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oneMadRssn said:
Glad you pointed this out. I agree that it's insecure. How is a chip + pin more secure though? Most of the data breaches happen well after the transaction has occurred, where hackers steal the stored card data. Often that data is encrypted, and they also gain access to the key. I don't think any chip and pin really addresses this issue; though I could be mistaken.
Click to expand...

It is though, France for example has cut card fraud by more than 80% since its introduction in 1992.
 
oneMadRssn

oneMadRssn

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bushido said:
It is though, France for example has cut card fraud by more than 80% since its introduction in 1992.
Click to expand...

Yes, but in 1992 credit card fraud was different. I've read articles that the common mechanism for theft in Europe back then was thieves would simply swipe credit cards to take the data off the magnetic strip and make phony cards. Typically a waiter or waitress would do this with your card when they took it away for a moment to bring it to the register, or a cashier who was good at memorizing numbers could do this. For various reasons, this was also a problem in the US but it wasn't as prevalent.

A chip and pin does directly address this above issue - it's simple multi-factor authentication. You have something, the chip; and you know something, the pin. Swiping the chip alone doesn't do you any good. Whether it's a chip or a magnetic strip is largely irrelevant. I suppose an RF chip may have been harder to read using off-the-shelf parts back in 1992, but not today.

I don't think this will address data theft from post-transaction stored data at all. This stored data likely contains both the credentials in the chip, and the pin.

Do you enter your pin when purchasing things online?
 
Parasprite

Parasprite

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Mar 5, 2013
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Neat, my roommate is obsessed with Whole Foods. Never been there myself but I can load her phone to try it out. Closest I've gotten to using a "bring-your-own mobile device"-type payment system so far was displaying screenshot of a Target Gift Card on my full-sized iPad at the register...:cool:

That felt as awkward as it sounded.
 
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BuffaloTF

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Jun 10, 2008
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bushido said:
random i just read a story today that the US is only now starting to implement Chip + PIN cards? i couldnt believe people are still "swiping and signing" seems so unsecure and 2001 to me
Click to expand...

This is my trade in Payments & Cash Management for a multi-national... We've been at it for the better part of a decade now, but the system needs to be sold to retailers, which often may rely on old phone connections and not looking for a new system. Further, there was a vocal minority outcry of how someone can steal your card data from across a restaurant that we needed to deal with, which led to a lot of PayPass and Blink card deployments to be scaled back and magstrips to be re-issued by MasterCard and Visa. Now, it's ending by force in 2015 on any card on those 2 networks. I've yet to see what AmEx or Discover are doing, I would imagine exactly the same.

We are our own worst enemies sometimes, it didn't matter how much we tried to educate the benefits, people had their minds made up.
 
C

cmwade77

macrumors 65816
Nov 18, 2008
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oneMadRssn said:
Glad you pointed this out. I agree that it's insecure. How is a chip + pin more secure though? Most of the data breaches happen well after the transaction has occurred, where hackers steal the stored card data. Often that data is encrypted, and they also gain access to the key. I don't think any chip and pin really addresses this issue; though I could be mistaken.
Click to expand...

Actually, from my understanding it is more secure, because neither number gets stored anywhere, the transaction is processed right then and there. The money comes out of your account and there is no further processing needed, which means that the card number was never stored somewhere to allow it to get stolen.
 
ipedro

ipedro

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Nov 30, 2004
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Square will have a hard time expanding this outside the US with their current reader. Magnetic strips are out in Canada and several European countries I've visited. Chip and tappable cards are the norm. Some of my bank cards don't even come with magnetic strips.

I use Square to charge my clients but lately, I've been having less and less clients able to pay with a swipe.
 
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