Square is a new phone payments startup with a big goal of making cash obsolete by giving small businesses a way to turn their cellphones or tablet computers in to credit card terminals. Now the company is trying to make wallets obsolete too by introducing the concept of mobile credit cards for consumer purchases.
The company has announced a new way for shoppers to pay for merchandise by simply giving their name to the merchant. Customers would use a new feature on Square's iPhone or Android apps called Card Case to make payments. Merchants would then use an app called Register to ring up the payment and track purchases. This is already a crowded space in the tech world, with a lot of investment money flowing to companies like Square that are tackling aspects of making the offline purchasing process more convenient by replacing cash registers, loyalty cards and paper receipts with a single integrated system.