Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter, has moved from simplified blogging to a simplified payments side-project, with the launch of the start-up, Square.
In typical Twitter style, Dorsey announced the company with a tweet rather than a press release today:
“Announcing our new company, called @Square, which I’m thrilled to be a part of: http://squareup.com,” he wrote, in 99 characters.
Square’s service features a dongle that plugs into an audio input jack and allows users to swipe credit cards to make payments.
An iPhone/iPod touch implementation allows users to identify themselves with an on-screen photo and receive instant receipts (pictured).
According to the site: “In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment. Even though a majority of payments has moved to plastic cards, accepting payments from cards is still difficult, requiring long applications, expensive hardware, and an overly complex experience. Square was born a few days later right next to the old San Francisco US Mint.”
Which is appropriate for a payments company and it’s fitting that the instantly trendy SoMa (south of Market St) start-up is featuring the new Sightglass coffee shop in the area, in which Dorsey is also an investor.
We would like to tell you more and try to figure out whether this is a solution in search of a real problem, but that’s about all we can glean from the website. There is this interview though that Dorsey, who has no plans to leave Twitter, gave at Sightglass to TechCrunch and, like many others, we’re hoping to beta-test the product soon.
