Why wouldn't they just use a portable reader like food delivery guys have been for over a decade? I mean, in Canada if you order food the driver shows up with a machine you insert your card and enter your pin. These machines do all communication by 3G. You see food trucks and coffee shops with these too. Isn't that the norm in the US?
Portable chip based card readers have been around longer than Square. Hell, I remember using them (pre-chip of course) since around 2000ish. And today they are just ubiquitous. They are straightforward and user-friendly for the user and today the Banks almost give them aways with your merchant account. I'm still trying to understand what problem Square is trying to solve -- other than wanting to use your iPhone for everything. I just don't see a viable business with them.
That's not the norm, as of this year the chips are not commonplace in US-issued cards.
What you have is an imprint machine, where the merchant sticks your card over a paper with a carbon copy, slides over the top to make an imprint, then hands the piece of paper back to you for signature, then rips out the top page for himself while handing you the carbon copy one.
As you can imagine, this does not go well in food truck environment, where the mode of operation at crunch time might be "process as many customers per minute as you can".
Wow. That's just crazy! I haven't seen one of those imprint machines in 15 years. I thought they were completely dead. Even before the Chip cards, it was normal to have portable terminals that you would just swipe, enter your tip, and it prints the receipt that you signed.
Portable chip based card readers have been around longer than Square. Hell, I remember using them (pre-chip of course) since around 2000ish. And today they are just ubiquitous. They are straightforward and user-friendly for the user and today the Banks almost give them aways with your merchant account. I'm still trying to understand what problem Square is trying to solve -- other than wanting to use your iPhone for everything. I just don't see a viable business with them.