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0 pointsreissbaker14y ago0 comments

What were the non-hardware non-card payment methods attempted? I'm familiar with NFC, and somewhat intimately familiar with Square and its card-based rivals, but the only alternatives I know of are those pay-through-your-carrier attempts that are an even bigger can of worms than a card company. Were there others?

To reference your Visa point (which I suspect wasn't serious), Square was card-based long before the Visa investment.

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thinkcomp14y ago

Starbucks (for payments) and the airlines (for boarding passes) have done pretty well with barcode scanners. It requires hardware only on the merchant side than most merchants already have in one form or another.

reissbakerOP14y ago

Er. But unless you've given Starbucks direct access to your bank account, those are fundamentally card-based too.

thinkcomp14y ago

Not quite. Starbucks uses its own pre-paid system that does use a plastic card, but one without any major network's logo on it. It's just store credit.

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0 pointsreissbaker14y ago0 comments

To reference your Visa point (which I suspect wasn't serious), Square was card-based long before the Visa investment.

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thinkcomp14y ago

reissbakerOP14y ago

Er. But unless you've given Starbucks direct access to your bank account, those are fundamentally card-based too.

thinkcomp14y ago

Not quite. Starbucks uses its own pre-paid system that does use a plastic card, but one without any major network's logo on it. It's just store credit.

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse