Comment Re:Yikes (Score 1) 145
Square seems to be going for the paypal market - being a middle-man between the credit card companies and the merchants.
Just like with paypal, I cannoth fathom why the credit card companies would allow this to go on without offering a similar service themselves, and I also cannot understand how it could possibly be anything but more expensive per transaction for the merchant.
The difference is that Square is actually a Merchant Service Provider, for all intents and purposes, they ARE the credit card company. Paypal is more like an escrow service. I own a small business and have a merchant service account through a decent provider, the rates are pretty good and the money shows up in my bank pretty quickly. After reviewing services like Square and Intuit's GoPayment I realized that once I factor in the monthly fee I'm currently paying my provider, any fees associated with my POS terminal as well as yearly compliance fees I can get a MUCH better rate by using Square or GoPayment (I decided to go with GoPayment because of the integration with QuickBooks).