How a team of 150 at Square made the $999 Square Register, a two-screen Android device with its own secure enclave chip, aiming to be SMBs' preferred PoS device
Lauren Goode / Wired :
Context & Ripple Effects
The Wired profile closes the loop on a hardware ladder Square has been building since its first Apple Pay-ready NFC reader and the $49 retail-distributed reader: a dedicated $60-per-month-per-register retail POS service in early 2017, then the $999 Register announcement last October. What the feature adds is the scale behind it — roughly 150 people and a device built on Android with its own secure enclave chip rather than repurposed consumer hardware.
That security detail is the story's hook. Square is pitching an integrated device to small and medium businesses at a moment when, per the coverage, one in three SMBs was breached last year — so the enclave argument lands on a customer base already primed to pay for trust.
First-order effects
- Larger SMB merchants choosing between a $999 Register and a tablet-plus-reader setup now weigh a purpose-built, tamper-resistant device against cheaper but more exposed assemblies.
- Square's own software revenue rides along: the Register gives the per-month POS subscription a dedicated vessel, tying hardware sales to recurring service fees.
Second-order effects
- The product line now brackets the market from both ends — the Register up top and the later $399 all-in-one Terminal below it — squeezing generic tablet POS vendors into a price-performance corner they have to answer with their own integrated devices.
- The Reader SDK extends the same strategy beyond Square's box: third-party vendors embedding Square Reader hardware into their own apps turn Square's secure-payment stack into a component others build on.
Third-order effects
- If SMB breach pressure holds, dedicated secure-enclave silicon stops being a differentiator and becomes table stakes for merchant hardware — pushing the POS industry toward full-stack ownership of chip, OS, and software rather than commodity-device assembly.
- A pattern of hardware-plus-subscription-plus-SDK would restructure merchant services around whoever controls the integrated stack, shifting leverage from card-reader makers toward platform owners like Square.
The trend: Merchant payments hardware is consolidating from add-on dongles into vertically integrated, security-hardened platforms where the vendor owns the silicon, the OS layer, and the software subscription together.