Speaker 1: Square gives the credit card terminal an upgrade. My interview
Speaker 1: with CEO Jack Dorsey. What's going on? I'm Rich Damiro.
Speaker 1: This is Rich on Tech. Just how crazy is the
Speaker 1: current state of payment affairs in our country right now?
Speaker 2: Think about it.
Speaker 1: We just went through the whole chip and dip thing.
Speaker 1: Now we're getting into mobile payments, and when you go
Speaker 1: into a business, you have no idea what payment method
Speaker 1: they are going to accept. Personally, I would love to
Speaker 1: ditch my wallet and only use mobile payments, but you
Speaker 1: never know if they're going to take it. And even
Speaker 1: the newest credit card terminals are still pretty bad. They
Speaker 1: seem to be designed by someone who never has to
Speaker 1: use one. The screen is tiny, you can't even tell
Speaker 1: what it's asking you to do.
Speaker 2: So enter Square.
Speaker 1: This is the company that revolutionized payments by allowing anyone
Speaker 1: to accept a credit card in seconds, thanks to that
Speaker 1: tiny reader that you plugged into your phone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we saw this nine years ago with a very
Speaker 3: simple purpose, which was we saw sellers missing sales because
Speaker 3: they couldn't accept credit cards, and we realized pretty early
Speaker 3: on it just wasn't about building a credit card reader,
Speaker 3: it was actually helping them make the sale in the
Speaker 3: first place, and we've grown a business around helping them
Speaker 3: not only make that sale, but ideally helping them make
Speaker 3: more sales as well.
Speaker 1: That's Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. Recently I met
Speaker 1: up with him in San Francisco, and if his name
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, that's because he's also the guy who started Twitter.
Speaker 1: We checked out some shops using Square hardware along hate Ashbury,
Speaker 1: which is a trendy section of town.
Speaker 3: Our philosophy has always been it doesn't matter what device
Speaker 3: comes across the counter, you should always be set up
Speaker 3: to make the sale. So if someone wants to pay
Speaker 3: with their watch, or their phone, or their chip card
Speaker 3: or swiping their old MasterCard, they can do it. You
Speaker 3: don't have to think about it. It's really in the
Speaker 3: pay it's in the your customer's hand, the payer's hand,
Speaker 3: and we just need to make sure that we're building
Speaker 3: something for a seller where they don't have to think
Speaker 3: about it at all.
Speaker 1: And that's what they hope to accomplish with their latest device.
Speaker 1: It's called Square Terminal and that credit card swipey thing
Speaker 1: that you know but don't love, but it is so
Speaker 1: much better than what we have right now.
Speaker 3: Terminal is uh is the launch I'm most excited about.
Speaker 3: It's just not only something that you see everywhere. You
Speaker 3: see those little rectangular h black boxes that look like
Speaker 3: they barely work, and they have these grungy keypads, and
Speaker 3: you don't want to touch the thing, but you have
Speaker 3: to touch the thing because I swipe your credit card
Speaker 3: and it's always yelling at you too. It's always yelling
Speaker 3: at you. It's screaming at you. It's kind of terrible,
Speaker 3: but like it's you know, it results. It's a culmination
Speaker 3: of our understanding of like how to build hardware and
Speaker 3: build software that work together that it is intuitive that
Speaker 3: you can just pick it up and start using it.
Speaker 1: Terminal looks like an iPhone that's in a permanent white
Speaker 1: plastic housing. It's wireless, it's Wi Fi enabled, you charge
Speaker 1: it up, and it accepts all the ways that we
Speaker 1: want to pay, whether you want to swim your card,
Speaker 1: whether you want to dip your card, or whether you
Speaker 1: want to tap to pay using mobile pay from Google,
Speaker 1: Samsung or Apple.
Speaker 3: It's something we're really proud of because we hope to
Speaker 3: replace all those big and small black boxes on the
Speaker 3: counter that people feel like it's a burden and they
Speaker 3: have to put up with instead of enjoying using so
Speaker 3: that you know, my favorite question ask a seller is
Speaker 3: just how does this make you feel? That's what that's
Speaker 3: what we're trying to build is like how does this
Speaker 3: thing make you feel? And if it makes them feel great,
Speaker 3: if it makes them feel empowered, if it makes them
Speaker 3: feel like they can sell more and they can treat
Speaker 3: their customers better than awesome if it if it doesn't
Speaker 3: come back positive, then way of work to do.
Speaker 2: Terminal is really fast. Plus it's flexible.
Speaker 1: It can hang out on a counter, but since it's wireless,
Speaker 1: it can also be brought anywhere customers want to pay,
Speaker 1: like table side. And one of the businesses that I
Speaker 1: spoke to that tested the terminal told me the battery
Speaker 1: easily lasts the entire day.
Speaker 3: This is a great use case on the countertop here.
Speaker 3: But you know, we have a lot of restaurants who
Speaker 3: are now going to the table and saying, you know,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be you know, fifteen dollars and you swipe
Speaker 3: your card or you tap your watch, or you know,
Speaker 3: you tap your phone, and you operate the whole thing.
Speaker 3: And then I take it back and I go to
Speaker 3: the next table, So it is super flexible for whatever
Speaker 3: a seller needs to do. And that was by design.
Speaker 1: And yes, if you still like an old school receipt
Speaker 1: what some of us need, there is a printer built
Speaker 1: in as well.
Speaker 3: Try to emphasize digital and going to a phone number
Speaker 3: and email address, but you know, sometimes you put one paper.
Speaker 3: It's important.
Speaker 1: After seeing terminal inaction at a busy hair salon, we
Speaker 1: decided to head to a record shop, which to me
Speaker 1: is the quintessential small business. Jack picked out some Marvin
Speaker 1: Gay then paid with his preferred choice, tapping his Apple
Speaker 1: Watch to the Square terminal reader and paying with Apple Pay.
Speaker 3: We believe a small business's key to any community. It
Speaker 3: provides a fabric and a support network that I think
Speaker 3: helps residential neighborhood as well. So anytime you have a
Speaker 3: place to walk, place to hang out, place to think,
Speaker 3: it's it's much more attractive place to live. And it's
Speaker 3: also often these places that are the the meeting points
Speaker 3: where we you know, converse and debate and have conversations
Speaker 3: and move everything forward. So the critical part of our
Speaker 3: society and anything that we can do to help enable
Speaker 3: them to participate more fully in the economy work. We're
Speaker 3: down for now.
Speaker 1: If I ever started a small business, I would love
Speaker 1: to use the stuff that Square offers. And since Jack
Speaker 1: is an entrepreneur and CEO of two companies at the
Speaker 1: same time, I was curious to hear his thoughts on entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3: You definitely have to be a hustler of sorts and
Speaker 3: you know, do whatever it takes to make it work.
Speaker 3: And I love that attitude. It's an entrepreneurial attitude. But
Speaker 3: I hope that you know, our our hardware and our
Speaker 3: software takes a little bit of the burden off. One
Speaker 3: last thing you have to think about, because you should
Speaker 3: never really have to think about making the sale. You
Speaker 3: should think about the creativity and the soul that you
Speaker 3: put into your place or your experience, and how you
Speaker 3: treat your customers and how you hire folks to help
Speaker 3: and you know what that means, and what you might
Speaker 3: want to do for the broader community outside of your
Speaker 3: own location. That's what you should be thinking about. You
Speaker 3: shouldn't be thinking about how does my terminal work.
Speaker 1: Talking to the Square folks about the other way of
Speaker 1: accepting plastics sounds like it's a very complicated process with
Speaker 1: lots of contracts, equipment costs, and negotiations, which is probably
Speaker 1: why we see such a mess when it comes to
Speaker 1: what businesses decide to accept or not accept. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: only take certain cards, others ask for minimum charges when
Speaker 1: using a credit card, or other businesses just don't accept
Speaker 1: cards at all.
Speaker 3: That's the key insight we had is like more and
Speaker 3: more payments, we're moving away from paper cash to a
Speaker 3: credit card, and the credit card industry was leaving merchants
Speaker 3: out because they wouldn't I actually allow them to accept
Speaker 3: them in the first place, because they had to go
Speaker 3: through a credit check process to do that. And a
Speaker 3: lot of people who are just getting started have bad
Speaker 3: credit or don't have much of a credit card record
Speaker 3: at all. Like when we started Square, I was in
Speaker 3: a credit card debt. I had terrible credit, so I
Speaker 3: would not be allowed to start a small business. So
Speaker 3: that's what we faced and just solving that problem, in
Speaker 3: addition to building the hardware on the software, is what
Speaker 3: made us valuable to people.
Speaker 2: Square Terminal is available now.
Speaker 1: It's four hundred dollars or ninety nine dollars if you've
Speaker 1: never had a Square account. After a three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: processing credit you pay two point six percent of transactions
Speaker 1: plus ten cents per transaction. If you have a small business,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend you take a look at what Square offers. Personally,
Speaker 1: as a consumer, I love seeing Square at small businesses.
Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure to use, and from a technology standpoint,
Speaker 1: it just seems like a step in the right direction.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this, please subscribe on your preferred podcasting app,
Speaker 1: and please tell your friends.
Speaker 2: That's the best way we're gonna grow here. I'm Rich Damiro.
Speaker 1: If you want to watch my TV segment with Jack Dorsey,
Speaker 1: you can go to my website Rich on tech dot tv,
Speaker 1: or check the show notes.
Speaker 2: I'm Rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.