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Comment by chromejs10 | Hacker News Reader

I think this is really smart. Think how insane garage sales can be now when people can accept credit card payments. Or being able to split checks at a restaurant (when the waiter/waitress wont do it) by charging the others at the table while you pay the restaurant. Sure it looks like Square is losing money on this, but I think it was on HN where I read that Square was already processing $1mil a day. I'd also assume that this $10 credit won't be around forever.

Either way, the simplicity of Square is what will make consumers interested.

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I just came back from eating, and two people used paypal over their phones to pay each other to split a meal... doesn't seem like carrying an extra gadget around is as good as the "what's your paypal" method.

Well I mean it was just an example. But I'm sure that people are more likely to have credit cards than PayPal accounts. I personally am not a fan of it.

What I did was epoxied the Square reader onto a keyring. That way I don't need to think about remembering it.

I don't know how it works, but for infrequent situations like this couldn't you just use the Square service by typing in the card number?

Why would you want to pay the credit card companies to split a bill at a restaurant when you can split it for free with other solutions?

This is something my startup has been working on (among other problems in payments):

https://www.facecash.com/video/index.html?video=2

video does not explain how exactly payment split would occur. My understanding is, its easy to calculate how much each person owns, but thats easy part. hard part is to split the bill on n credit cards...

We don't use credit cards. The primary payer records the split and everyone else sends a free peer-to-peer transfer. It can be done through the app or the web.

People don't want to be charged a fee to make a face-to-face transaction with someone they know. That is a lousy business.

Because the convenience is worth the minimal fee? If I'm already paying $30 for dinner, the extra 82 cents doesn't really bother me.

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