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Apple Stores to Sell Square Stand Point-of-Sale System
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Yeah, magnetic strips were recently banned because of all the hacking and abuse where I live. The PoS stand is not much use in modern countries
As someone who had his credit card illegally replicated and swiped in a state 500 miles away... the use of pin numbers on CC's instead of signatures as they do in Europe is an excellent idea.
These ipad pos systems
Before I spent eight grand on a POS system, I heavily looked into all these new systems for iPad. Much cheaper in the long run.
My biggest turn off was the CLOUD service. I do not want my businesses' information on the net. Plain & Simple.
I'm a big apple fan, but is a 100% no no....
Before I spent eight grand on a POS system, I heavily looked into all these new systems for iPad. Much cheaper in the long run.
My biggest turn off was the CLOUD service. I do not want my businesses' information on the net. Plain & Simple.
I'm a big apple fan, but is a 100% no no....
I believe the reason for the 30 pin connector is to create a market for the ipad 2's and agree with everyone saying a 4 is total overkill, Apple has been using ipad 2's as smart signs in their own stores for years now, why not finally share the goodness.
Magnetic strips need to be an option seeing as some people don't have cards with chips, if the card has a chip most PoS systems require it to be used, but its your own fault if you decide not to go to a bank and upgrade your own security.
" It is also able to support additional peripherals like a receipt printer, kitchen printer, cash drawer, and barcode scanners. "
In my opinion its everything most businesses would need at a cheaper cost, better visual, and easier to use and teach than that of most PoS systems already out there.
Magnetic strips need to be an option seeing as some people don't have cards with chips, if the card has a chip most PoS systems require it to be used, but its your own fault if you decide not to go to a bank and upgrade your own security.
" It is also able to support additional peripherals like a receipt printer, kitchen printer, cash drawer, and barcode scanners. "
In my opinion its everything most businesses would need at a cheaper cost, better visual, and easier to use and teach than that of most PoS systems already out there.
I used to be against cloud services for POS, but in the past few years, I've experienced a few hardware failures with my PC-based restaurant POS system, which resulted in significant downtime from scrambling to buy a new PC or hard drive and restoring the data.
With the Square Stand, you can just buy another iPad or grab a spare from somewhere, and you're up and running again with hardly any downtime at all. However, the Square app lacks a lot of features that expensive POS solutions have, so I'll have to play around and see if there are any deal breakers.
Perhaps you should research more
There are iPad systems that can use a Mac Mini as a local server instead of a cloud.Lavu & Revel are my top choices right now. Lavu is my preference but they do not have a customer database feature yet to support delivery. Revel has it, but I am not as impressed with their feature set.
There are a number of iPad stands out there available for retail environments.
The title of the article certainly got my attention, because, even though the Square Stand is a third-party product and not necessarily 100% up to Apple's standards, selling it at Apple Stores will get it some more attention, and it will probably give potential purchasers a bit more confidence in the product (and maybe a higher level of support from Apple? At the Genius Bar, perhaps?).
I don't really know how *big* the market is for small-business Point-of-Sale systems (for hopefully obvious reasons, I would rather avoid the PoS abbreviation!), but the market plays into other observations around Apple potentially getting into sales and monetary transactions systems outside the confines of the Apple Store and the Online Store. Peer-to-peer ad hoc wifi networks and a fingerprint sensor on an iDevice (be it a watch or a phone) that is always with the shopper have pretty strong potential for secure transactions.
This little Square Stand might help lead us in that direction. And this new cooperation between Apple and Square might also hint a further cooperation/co-option in the future....
yes, but the stand is what I'm asking. THey are saying upgrade your register, when in fact you would need a separate place to keep the cash so more space and less secure IMO unless you can add a money box add on or something.
IMO This is just a plastic stand w/ a $300 app, paypal can even give you free swipers for cards for the iphone and such so IMO this is way overpriced. Make it $100 w/ stand and it would be a good deal.
From a Customer's perspective...
I shop at a number of places that use Square to accept credit card payments. I find the small Square readers to be noticeably less reliable in reading magnetic strip cards than are the dedicated PoS terminals with more robust card readers in them.
At one restaurant I frequent, the iPad is left with the reader sometimes unattended at their font desk, not a very secure method at all. So a system like this which is cheap (yes, $300 is dirt cheap) and can secure the iPad as well as providing a higher quality card reader is probably going to do well.
As for the Europe/Non-US Chip-PIN folks, this isn't designed for you. Almost no one in the US has Chip-PIN cards. Until recently, without a great deal of effort, they were almost impossible to obtain here. It's the problem of inventing and then deploying widely a technology that has long-term downsides. The rest of the world, doing more copying rather than inventing, gets to learn from our mistakes (GSM is a prime example of where Europe took a technology we invented and made it much better).
The complete absence of Chip-PIN terminals here means we need to continue to rely on this very insecure system we have until Apple replaces it with something better Tim Cook, we're waiting
I shop at a number of places that use Square to accept credit card payments. I find the small Square readers to be noticeably less reliable in reading magnetic strip cards than are the dedicated PoS terminals with more robust card readers in them.
At one restaurant I frequent, the iPad is left with the reader sometimes unattended at their font desk, not a very secure method at all. So a system like this which is cheap (yes, $300 is dirt cheap) and can secure the iPad as well as providing a higher quality card reader is probably going to do well.
As for the Europe/Non-US Chip-PIN folks, this isn't designed for you. Almost no one in the US has Chip-PIN cards. Until recently, without a great deal of effort, they were almost impossible to obtain here. It's the problem of inventing and then deploying widely a technology that has long-term downsides. The rest of the world, doing more copying rather than inventing, gets to learn from our mistakes (GSM is a prime example of where Europe took a technology we invented and made it much better).
The complete absence of Chip-PIN terminals here means we need to continue to rely on this very insecure system we have until Apple replaces it with something better
Tim Cook, we're waitinghttps://squareup.com/stand
It's compatible with cash drawers. My friend has her drawer bolted up, under the counter.
To be clear; you're saying the $8,000 POS system is cheaper in the long run? Why is that?
So you think consumers should be able to call these guys up and tell them what to sell, regardless of how little business sense it makes for them? And, in case you missed it, this is not a consumer product. It's not marketed to technology addicts who want the latest model of iPad, its for business owners who could seriously not give a damn whether it has a Retina screen or not.
Really haven't a clue what your point is, and I suspect vice versa.
Not sure what the OP was thinking, but as I understand it, all-in-one systems like Square don't support third-party credit card processing services, so you're forever at the mercy of the system vendor's fee schedule. For a store with considerable credit card sales volume, the difference between Square and cheaper processing options could easily exceed $8,000.
Every business owner I have talked to says Square doesn't scale very well and their transaction percentage fee on CC isn't very good.
Canada does PIN numbers too, but when I bring my card across the border I just need to swipe. They would need to introduce pins worldwide and not allow just a swipe and signature to combat is.
Of course none of this combats online illegal usages......
It is a sad world, but this is the sort of thing low life scum in the UK would try and steal.
Connector limited? So just put out a version with the Lightning connector. This is not exactly rocket science with this level of electrical engineering and software....building to a spec.
This is one of the reasons why I wish these stands and software would support a dual iPad system. That way you can have the cashier view and a cx view where they can see what is being put in, type their pin, enter email for a receipt or whatever. Without the need for twisting things back and forth.
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But the way that Apple does it they could switch any time and when minimal effort. It would just be a change in a cable.
Would this be as easy or would it require a whole new stand.
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If it wasn't then it wouldn't be sold in their stores or on their site
Genius Bar is for Apple products only. Folks needing support with other products have to go to the manufacturer or handle it as a consumer law issue in countries with those rules but that really just comes down to having an extended return/exchange policy.
Paging grammar nazis...
Isn't the vice versa of the statement I really haven't a clue what your point is the statement Your point of view really hasn't a clue what I am?
Well I'm not sure, since my areas of expertise are the spelling of ridiculous, and the construction of the phrase couldn't care less.
Nevertheless I'm fairly sure vice versa isn't strictly limited to the transposition of subject and object, and is therefore prone to ambiguity. I'm absolutely sure though, that vice versa is an adverb and so your phrase the vice versa of a is b makes as much grammatical sense as the quickly of slow is fast.
i wish i had not sold my ipad 3. can it work with a 30 pin to lightning connector?
i hope they soon bring out another which works with the ipad 4.
i hope they soon bring out another which works with the ipad 4.
it's strange to see that they decided to go with the old 30 pin port than the new lightning port.
GSM was created in Europe, based most closely on the Nordic Mobile Telephony 450 MHz (launched to the public in 1981 and still operating in some countries). And NTT of Japan launched a mobile phone technology in 1979.
Hell, the Germans used radio-based telephones in WW2.
The first US mobile phone network didn't start up until 1983.
Take your blinkers off. Not everything is invented in the US of A.