Twitter Founder, Jack Dorsey: The Man Behind Square iPhone Payment System

Mon, Oct 19, 2009

Im assuming that you all know what Twitter is , but you might not know what Square is. Plugging into the headphone jack of either an iPhone or iPod Touch, the dongle takes a swipe of your card, the seller enters the purchase data and you do your best penless John Hancock on the touchscreen. After that, a receipt is delivered by email and the app retains geotagging data for each transaction.

An Engadget reveals that Jack Dorsey, the man behind Twitter, is working on a half-secret startup project since around may. This new project is based around the concept of using the iPhone as a personal cash register which is basically the Square concept.

And that’s no accident. In the images we ran of the Square system, you can see a domain name on a receipt: squareup.com. Squareup.com is the domain of the Square System (obviously), and a casual investigation into the site’s WHOIS profile reveals registrant info that points to an office in San Francisco, and a contact email address which reads… billing@paybysquirrel.com. Square, squirrel, square… are you getting it? So the cat, er, squirrel appears to be out of the bag. Now the question is whether or not Dorsey and co. can turn this fairly obscure piece of tech into the kind of firestorm which Twitter has become — and who knows, maybe there’ll even be a business model this time.

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