Square

Square’s latest payments reader is coming to an Apple store near you, the company tells TechCrunch. The devices will retail for $49 and be available online and in-store throughout the U.S. Launched last fall, Square’s new contraption is NFC-enabled and works with Apple Pay. Now the standard in many countries, …

Square Cash, the peer-to-peer payments app that aims to replace cash by offering instant deposits, rolled out another feature today that better positions the app to challenge competitors like PayPal and Venmo: the ability to maintain a cash balance. That is, users can now choose to switch on an optional “Cash Drawer” …

Google is rolling out a pilot program today that introduces a new way to pay cashiers — and it involves leaving your phone in your pocket. It’s called Hands Free, and it’s a way to basically connect your phone with a point of sales system using the sensors on your …

It’s been almost three years since Square expanded its mobile payments service into a new country — it most recently hit Japan, its first foray outside of North America, in May 2013 — but this week it went Down Under with a long-awaited launch in Australia. Square, which went public last year and operates in four …

Square is acquiring the team behind Framed Data, a predictive analytics service, and will be deploying the team of data scientists to its Square Capital team. Square tracks merchants’ transaction history through its services in order to better determine their eligibility for loans through Square Capital. There are certainly a lot …

Square, which has been on a bit of a run lately, posted a quarter where it beat revenue estimates and saw its shares pop slightly after it reported its fourth-quarter earnings. This was Square’s first time reporting quarterly earnings as a public company, and it looks like the results weren’t …

Watch out Braintree, Stripe and other online checkout systems, Square is going after you. The company launched new APIs today for offline and online stores. But the bigger news is that e-commerce merchants can now process credit card payments using a simple form. Behind the scene, Square processes the payment. …

I spotted an OtterBox case on the train ride in this morning that more or less confirmed my feelings about the company’s products: big, bulky and protective. Swaddling one’s phone in an OtterBox case for a New York City subway ride is the smartphone equivalent to wearing a bulletproof vest …

Storehouse, an aesthetically pleasing and exceedingly well-designed mobile app for sharing multimedia stories, announced today that it will be sunsetting services for its users on July 15. Furthermore, CEO Mark Kawano tells me that the entire team at the app, currently four employees, will be moving to Square. Kawano was hush …

Facebook has found the Holy Grail of advertising in a set of new partnerships with point-of-sale systems like Square and Marketo that will prove who bought what after seeing Facebook’s ads. Even if you don’t buy something, Facebook will also now know you visited a store based on a new …