You are useless in Canada without Interac (debit, but not really from a US POV [1]). This is the number one choice of payment in Canada. Hell, I don't even carry cash anymore because Interac is near universal.
It's going to be difficult to gain traction for Square if they are offering businesses a solution that only provides half of what the competition does, even if it is cheaper.
Square has - unless they know something they aren't saying - massively misunderstood the reality of the marketplace in Canada. It is not the US with funny tax laws. In the realm of consumer banking/payment, we are light years ahead of the US in certain key ways.
1. In Canada, our bank/atm cards are our debit cards. The entire system is linked with a joint network called Interac. When you open a bank account you get a chip/PIN enabled card that allows you to make direct withdraws from ATMs, as well as instantly buy something from a terminal at a store. Credit Card providers are shut out of this system, and its 100% penetration with Canadian banks has made it the primary consumer choice for payments. Yes, security is a bit of an issue, hence the high rate of chip adoption in Canada. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac
In all fairness, interact involves fees for the consumer (depending on which bank you are with), and, outside of students who may not be eligible for the, almost everybody has credit cards.
You aren't incorrect; nonetheless interac is the number one choice of Canadians when it comes down to paying for something.
In fact in 2000, Interac Direct Payment surpassed cash as Canadians' preferred method of payment,7 and debit card payments have continued to grow.[1]
Offering credit cards only is a bad choice for a business, since Canadians will be looking to use Interac as well. The entire "debit card" market as Americans understand it doesn't exist in Canada for exactly this reason.
Re: Fees - Many banks now offer no fee debit usage. Such as my credit union - Coast Capital Savings. I haven't paid a surcharge on my debit card use since like 2001.
Which fees? On rare occasions some retailers try to charge a small fee at the point of sale on debit payments but I've never heard of a fee for the consumer to use debit.
I don't use cash and haven't for years. I only pay with debit.
Some banks charge a "$x fee per transaction". This has gone out of style though because of competition.
The practice of charging $x to use your card (whatever it is) by smaller businesses is actually against their terms of service and you can technically report them.
You're correct about the current state of payments in Canada, but many Canadian banks are now issuing Visa debit cards similar to the debit cards issued by American banks.
Visa and Mastercard have been trying to muscle out the Interac consortium so that they can charge higher fees, but with mercifully little success so far.
What is really amazing is to launch a website this big and have a typo right on the front page.
"Sains frais" just means nothing. My guess is they wanted to say "Sans frais", which is "without fee".
Nobody speaks French at Square ?!
"Square Register is the free app that allows anyone to safe and secure credit card payments with[...]"
That said, it isn't a big deal to me. Square is really cool and I hope it will be available in Australia at some point, though I won't be holding my breath.
Some of the comments criticising stripe-only and lack of Interac support, seem a tad hyperbolic.
While these are valid concerns, Stripe transactions are still accepted and I'm sure there's a decent chunk of places using stripe. By the time chip is universal, I'm sure Square will have addressed this shortcoming. As for Interac, I'm presumig that the expansion to Canada will also include the Starbucks partnership, so I imagine it can't be far behind.
The regulatory environment is much different in Canada. The biggest thing I see here is the fact that a startup with significant attention and traction is entering our market. When they partnered with Starbucks, I was curious if that would mean they would provide coverage across North America and it definitely looks like they are. In the short term, I think Square Wallet is the key takeaway here. Mobile payments are gaining some serious steam and Square has a big chance to establish an early lead.
I think some of my fellow Canadians are being a bit harsh on Square here. You raise some good points, Starbucks is also one of the only places here in Canada that I still swipe at. Most other places insert chip.
But I think it will take a long time for those others to switch or even consider using a different platform. I'd guess that this is also what Square assumes.
But there's a big opportunity here that I enjoy dealing with in the US but hate here in Canada. I don't use cash and I travel a lot. I have to go to the airport by taxi frequently. In Canada it's a pain in the ass because they actually get out the old carbon copy machine and the drivers complain all the time. In the US the driver hands me his phone with a Square on it. So much better.
Square's goal seems to be removing as many barriers as possible to accepting CCs; they aren't aiming for people who already take them as much as those who otherwise couldn't (easily). The hardware needed to accept chipped cards is far more complex than the simple mag-stripe reader they're currently using (not to mention likely not universal); it'll take time to start production on those. The incumbents will still be around to displace once they're ready to.
Starbucks in Canada is already using what I assume is a square based app. I'm not sure how this has any effect on accepting Interac, since the Starbucks app doesn't work in that fashion at all. It's closer to pay-pal than a pos tool.
I'm not sure if it's transitioned to a Square-based app yet. If I recall correctly, details around the partnership were slim.
In the short term, it meant that Square would process all of Square's payments on the backend. Square app-integration would occur in the long term. My line of reasoning was basically that Square's launch in Canada closely coincides with the Starbucks partnership, which means they will be processing all of their Canadian transactions, which has to include Interac.
If/when the Starbucks app transitions to the Square wallet type implementation, it would act as a catalyst for Square adoption in Canada. And you raise a good point, the app will change greatly once it's implemented.
Someone should tell Square that in Canada we use smart chips...I don't remember the last time I swipe a card....Cool product with prehistoric technology...
The rest of this thread is worth a read. To summarize: very soon chipped cards that are swiped instead of chip-and-pinned will be far more likely to trip the fraud alarm.
You are right but you and I know the Square brand so I won't have a problem to use it but here in canada any time Banks give you a brand new card with smart chips , they tell you to stop using the swipe system because it's not as safe as the smart chips... Guess what!? my mom stops and refuses to use a swipe system of any kind....
Because the PIN is not meant to be shared, it is a lot easier for banks to deny all responsibility for any card fraud when using chip-and-pin in court, which is why they are so gung-ho in convincing people to use them.
I'm surprised they even released a hardware swipe solution at all. Most canadian cards have NFC embedded in them now (Interac Flash, MasterCard PayPass, Visa payWave). Surely a much simpler solution is just being able to tap my card to a merchant's phone and avoid a special dongle all together?
I think we can assume that Square will transition to chip readers eventually. In the meantime, the swipe works on Canadian cards so it's not really an issue.
Yeah, it feels significantly less useful in the Canadian market without support for Interac. You couldn't run a business with just this, here (unless you want to get yelled at by, and lose a lot of sales to, the 90% of your customers who are going to want to pay by debit and not credit).
My girlfriend was selling at a craft fair recently, and I bought her a nice pair of earrings from another vendor who used Intuit's GoPayment system, and honestly I probably wouldn't have remembered to come back once I had cash (if I'd even gone to get any). In that sort of environment, the standard is 'cash only', so adding Visa/MC to that is a bonus, not a drawback, and in my case it made her a $60 sale she wouldn't have otherwise had.
This is especially true for higher-ticket items like silver jewellery, where I'm not likely to have $60 kicking around in my pocket, but I'll have no problem putting $60 on my Visa. Personally, I also find it hard to part with $60 in cash (more tangible) vs. putting it on my Visa or debit card.
For actual businesses (like bigger food carts), a proper 3G bank terminal is probably the appropriate response, but in places where people aren't likely to expect any card use at all (smaller food carts, craft fairs, yard sales), having Square (or similar) is a net positive.
The problem is, that's really a different use case/value proposition than Square has in the US.
Square is a godsend for small businesses there. Square's all over Portland, for instance, not just at yard sales and craft faires but in real businesses because it's an absolutely disruptive form of payment that lets them avoid some onerous fees and setup costs, and it lets them accept debit because debit piggybacks on the credit system in the US.
But it's pretty crippled for that here in Canada. I know several small business, including my wife's, who were dying for Square to come here, because getting set up with a proper payment terminal in Canada is obscenely expensive for a small business.
But there's absolutely no way that they could use this as offered, with zero debit support, ubiquitous customer demand for debit usage, and no support for chip-reading in an environment where chip usage will be mandatory in 2 years and in which not using a chip already causes credit card transactions to be declined as 'suspicious' at a fairly high rate.
I have to agree. I used Square in the US and loved it; since coming back to Canada I've been singing its praises to anyone who'll listen. However, now that it's launched and we've had time to think through what it looks like on the ground, these all look like pretty serious limitations to its widespread applicability in Canada. Although it's still useful for my needs (the odd Craigslist purchase, craft fairs, pop-up stores in the neighbourhood), I can't see it being as disruptive here as it is in the US given these limitations.
They seemingly don't. Which gives the current reader a, what, 2 year lifespan max? They shut swipe-based transactions down entirely at the beginning of 2015, IIRC. My Visa already is far more likely to flag a transaction as suspicious if it isn't chip-authenticated.
Between that and the total lack of Interac support, this is honestly a pretty lame offering. It feels like Square has absolutely no awareness of the current state of Canadian payment systems.
Actually, our shipping infrastructure is fine. It's our geography, population density and relatively small population that gets in the way.
Square in Canada is good thing, and I'd say potentially far more disruptive than they were even in the US. Having been in a seat where I had to negotiate and deal with almost every payment provider in Canada, and all of them verging on being downright evil IMO, a service that focuses on the customer experience (both merchant and end consumer) will be a fun disruption to watch.
Wait, this is a big deal if swipe is being phased out. Very few us cards have a chip. That will make it impossible for US tourists to use cards in Canada.
To clarify slightly: Starting in 2015, if your card has a chip, the bank/credit card company will blanket reject all transactions authenticated by swipe. If you have a card from a Canadian institution, it will be replaced by one with both a chip and magnetic strip by that time (and it probably was years ago already).
If your card only has swipe (like US tourists), presumably their institutions will still accept a swipe as valid authentication.
They detect that and use swipe-authorization in those cases. But you can, and probably should, use the chip in Europe/Asia/Latin America where chip readers are widespread.
The banks have been distributing FAQs with all of these answers for years, btw.
> But you can, and probably should, use the chip in Europe/Asia/Latin America where chip readers are widespread.
It's still pretty common to have 2-mode readers there (wehere you can chip or swipe), though they're slowly becoming rarer and I can't remember anybody actually using swipe.
If I'm going to use Square for my business, I want to know I'm not going to be changing horses frantically in 24 months when the strip is no longer an option.
The problem here is that Square is launching with, for the Canadian market, antiquated, rapidly approaching EOL technology, and given no indications if or when they'll catch up to the standard -- or even that they realize that their offering is substandard here compared to the US. Will they issue a new reader next month? A week before the deadline? Will they just pull out in 24 months?
No answers forthcoming.
(and that's on top of the other issues, like the vast majority of customers demand debit, and chip card credit cards that get swiped for transactions get declined at very high rates because it's highly correlated with skim fraud)
Edmonton I'd say > 95% of retailers are chip-and-pin. Every other place I've been is about the same. Which given that there's two years until they turn the legacy swipe system off entirely, is about where you'd expect everywhere to be in the transition.
why the downvotes? I was surprised that swipe isn't in other places, asked where he was located, and then said where I'm located. What's the problem with that?
I downvoted because the answer to your initial question is in the title of this post, and your wording was terribly provincial while not really contributing to the discussion. Just since you asked.
I was asking a question, and "Canada" is a big place. That is not the answer to the question. Also, just because the article is about Canada, doesn't mean we can't discuss payment processing around the world. There are people in this thread asking for support in Europe and Australia, there is no reason for me to expect every comment is pertaining to Canada.
Edit: also, while I'm not from Canada, I was there this summer and I had no problems getting my card swiped. Everywhere I needed to buy something took my card and swiped it. Hence my surprise.
But they all support swipe as well, if there's an issue with the chip (or if you put the card in backwards so it can't read the chip, and repeat until it gives up on you).
Personally, I'm hoping Square adds a new dongle with tap-to-pay (Paywave/Paypass/Interac Flash), which would be even more convenient.
> But they all support swipe as well, if there's an issue with the chip (or if you put the card in backwards so it can't read the chip, and repeat until it gives up on you).
For the time being, as a temporary measure while peoples cards are replaced with chip cards. Swipe is being fazed out entirely by 2015. You're already far more likely to get a rejected transaction or trip anti-fraud heuristics if your transaction is not chip-auth'd.
A lot of retailers I've been to require you to show government issued ID to prove your identity when your chip fails. Some downright refuse to accept your credit card.
Canada is nice and all, but what about us Australians? There is no alternative payment provider to a bank other than using "Paypal Here" (which launched a few months ago). Eftpos absolutely dominates retail transactions here, I think a competitor needs to step up because my understanding is Eftpos fees are quite high for a retailer here.
So far I've attempted two different forms to mail me a Square reader in Canada and both failed.
The first (presented immediately after registering) required me to provide a Zip code (and wouldn't accept a postal code) and the second (found through account settings) allowed me to provide a postal code but required I select a state (and only presented US states in a drop down).
Clear examples of common localization issues. Hope they get it sorted out so maybe, one day, I could actually use Square in Canada...
Embarrassingly, square.ca is rather... bare at the time of posting.
I am super excited for this, though. I have a number of friends who sell artwork at various outdoor fairs, and I've inundated them with tales of how much easier theirs lives would be if they could get a credit card reader for their phone. It really reduces the friction involved in trying to make what is essentially a several hundred dollar impulse purchase.
edit: Is it just me, or are all the thinks in the press release broken? squareup.ca, square.ca, squareup.com/ca/ca/fr, none of these work.
which seems to do the same thing as Square. Anyone used both services and is willing to compare them? Kudos seems to be slightly more expensive ($50 signup + higher swipe fees).
PayFirma is pretty pricey (and via Twitter I was told that they're 'aiming for a different market' than Square). Intuit's Gopayment seems like a better option for smaller businesses or craft fairs: http://gopayment.intuit.ca/
Anybody notice that www.square.ca has been hijacked? I have it redirecting to a page with an iframe from areasnap.com . I have tested this on two different networks near Vancouver.
It's going to be difficult to gain traction for Square if they are offering businesses a solution that only provides half of what the competition does, even if it is cheaper.
Square has - unless they know something they aren't saying - massively misunderstood the reality of the marketplace in Canada. It is not the US with funny tax laws. In the realm of consumer banking/payment, we are light years ahead of the US in certain key ways.
1. In Canada, our bank/atm cards are our debit cards. The entire system is linked with a joint network called Interac. When you open a bank account you get a chip/PIN enabled card that allows you to make direct withdraws from ATMs, as well as instantly buy something from a terminal at a store. Credit Card providers are shut out of this system, and its 100% penetration with Canadian banks has made it the primary consumer choice for payments. Yes, security is a bit of an issue, hence the high rate of chip adoption in Canada. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac