Targeting Merchants, Square Debuts Register iPad App And Analytics; Now Processing $4B In Payments Per Year
As we reported earlier this year, mobile payments company Square revealed that it was planning to add a number of new operational capabilities and data analysis to the register, including in-depth analytics.
Context & Ripple Effects
Square’s earlier retail boost from Apple positioned its card-acceptance service closer to physical merchants. The Register iPad app and merchant analytics extend that proposition from taking a payment to operating the checkout counter.
Square reports a $4 billion annual payments run rate, giving the Register launch a meaningful installed transaction base rather than the profile of a standalone iPad utility.
First-order effects
- Merchants using Square gain an iPad-based register and in-depth analytics alongside payment acceptance, consolidating checkout and transaction reporting in one product.
- Square gains a deeper role in merchant operations, with its payment flow supplying the data used by the new analytics features.
Second-order effects
- Merchants that adopt Register face a stronger incentive to keep payment activity on Square, because moving processors would also separate checkout and analytics from the transaction stream.
- iPad becomes a more central piece of the merchant point-of-sale setup as Square packages it with payments and operational software.
Third-order effects
- The launch points toward payment providers competing on merchant software and transaction data, not only on the ability to accept cards.
- As checkout, analytics and payment processing converge, the provider controlling the transaction record is better positioned to build recurring merchant workflows around it.
The trend: Merchant payments are evolving into software-led operating systems in which the transaction stream powers analytics and reinforces processor choice.