Square is a new micropayment/mobile phone payment system by the co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey. It raises an interesting question about trust which is something I want to write more extensively about soon because trust is something that works on many levels including the media we consume. TV is (generally) a more trustworthy media than the internet because it costs a lot of time and money to get a communication message onto mainstream media's traditional screen but in any case I think this could be the most disruptive business model to the credit card business ever.
Which would be a good thing.
I think Paypal have blown it by being greedy, slow and thinking like a 20th century business rather than trying to figure out how to be truly revolutionary which often involves waiting a bit and not screwing the customer.
What interests me is that Jack Dorsey has already shown with Twitter that he is much more interested in doing the right thing than squeezing any business venture for immediate profit or Twitter would be looking different than it does now. Because of this I immediately trust him and take this new business seriously. The picture above shows the 'dongle' require to make payments and which works with an iPhone or an iTouch. Japan is way ahead of the game on the built in micropayments system for their mobile phones and may explain why Twitter always seem to pilot ideas in Japan first, but you can read more about Square over here.
