Square today announced its Register and Card Case products to complement the existing Square reader and smartphone applications. While Square has been focused on the merchant experience, this move expands its role on the consumer side. (Consumers have been able to receive receipts by email or text message when making purchases at Square merchants.)
With the new application, customers will be able to search for nearby Square merchants, see what’s on their menu and view receipts for previous transactions. Customers can also pay right from their mobile phone and the payment is confirmed on the merchant’s iPad.
Merchants will have the ability to accept a payment without swiping a card. They can also keep better track of what they’re selling. A loyalty program allows businesses to reward loyal customers. Unlike check in based systems which involve users to self-report, this system would be harder to cheat.
One open question is whether these transactions will be treated as card present transactions for Square. I expect that Square will charge merchants the swipe rate for these transactions. If they’re paying out the card-not-present rates, this will eat into their margins.
What we’re seeing here is only the beginning. There are a lot of important problems that can be solved with the data that Square will be collecting:
Consumer problems
- It’s 2 a.m. and I’m hungry. What’s open? This is a problem that search generally handles poorly. Yelp has done the best job of collecting this among anyone I’ve seen. (Google tries, but its data is less comprehensive.) Even when the data are collected, they are often inaccurate. (Holidays, business was slow so we closed early, etc.) The Square Register could contain a virtual Open and Closed indicator that is visible to consumers.
- I have a craving for a dosa. Where can I get one? With menu item data, Square could answer that question — at least for its merchants.
- I have a receipt, but I can’t remember who I was with. The Square app could allow users to flag tax-related transactions and record notes like who you ate with.
- I want to tell someone about a place I ate at, but can’t remember the name. (And want credit.) People are generally bad at remembering place names. Merchants could also offer rewards for new customer referrals, much like online merchants do.
- I’m in a hurry and I need an order to go. Consumers could order right from their mobile phones, the order would pop up on the merchant’s screen and the merchant could select an estimated pickup time. For the merchant, this also reduces the risk of nonpayment for phone orders that aren’t picked up.
Merchant problems
- Updating Web sites is hard. Most local business Web sites I go to are horribly out-of-date. Menu items and pricing can be more than a year old. Hours are often wrong. Maps are hard to find. Square could take the data from the Register system and generate Web pages with dynamic information, including today’s specials and hours. Some card issuers and payment processors have offered Web site creation, but these have mostly been low quality efforts.
- I don’t have a mobile presence. Very few local businesses have dedicated mobile sites. At best, you get a hard-to-read version of the main site. At worst, you see sites created by incompetent flash designers who knew nothing about user experience. These render blank on an iPhone. Square-generated mobile Web pages would provide easy access to key info such as location, hours and menus. Google says about 40% of searches on mobile devices are local in nature — as a result, this is becoming increasingly critical.
- I don’t have time to enter data multiple times. Square could also generate a PDF that could be printed for in-store menus. Data entered once gets used for POS, paper menus, Web site, mobile site and promotions. This not only saves on work, it eliminates inconsistencies which can cause customer service problems. Getting a bit crazier and thinking further out into the future, a Square app on an Apple TV could show promotions in store.
- I want to get people to try new items. Square could use transaction history to entice regular customers to try things on the menu that they haven’t tried before. With promotions, you want to spend your promotion dollars on transactions that wouldn’t happen otherwise. Paper coupons are dumb in this regard. Say you’ve got a raspberry tart that you think is amazing. You could find all of the customers who haven’t ordered it and send them a promotion.
- I want to know what my customers think of me. An email after the fact could prompt users for feedback and generating a net promoter score. It can also be a way of drumming up more business. For example: “Would you recommend us to a friend?” If the customer says, no, you can ask why. If yes, you can ask for friends right then and there. “Whom would like to recommend us to?” The referral can be coded so that the business can thank the original customer for the referral. A Square app could also provide more actionable data than the typical Yelp review — a restaurant would know when they ate, what they ordered, etc. This would make it easier to identify problem employees or dishes.
- I want to know how I’m doing compared with other businesses in my area. I charge $3.50 for a slice of pizza. How does that compare with others? How does my revenue compare? Of course, this all needs to be done in a way that protects business anonymity. Data would only be available when there is enough participation so that a single businesses’ information can’t be identified. Participation should be opt in, with the carrot being access to data. The key here is that data needs to be in a meaningful context. I’ve seen many startups that just want to throw data at businesses. That’s not good enough. Square will also need to answer the “So what?” What decisions should I make based on that data?
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