PRINCETON: Twitter founder now thinking Square

By Ellis Liang, Special to the Packet
   Create revolutions, not disruptions, said Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to Princeton University students at a lecture on Tuesday.
   More than 250 students and administrators, including President Shirley Tilghman, attended Dorsey’s lecture on “Making Payments Better for Everyone.”
   Dorsey’s social networking service, Twitter, revolutionized communication, journalism and more. Even after stepping down as CEO of Twitter in 2008, Dorsey continues to make revolutions — now in commerce.
   His newest start-up, Square, is as simple as Twitter’s 140-character messages. Square is an electronic payment service that processes credit or debit card transactions by swiping the card through a small square card reader that can be plugged into a smartphone.
   Dorsey was first inspired to create Square when a close artisan friend lost $2,000 in sales because he did not accept credit cards. But with Square, credit card terminals and cash registers become portable and easy to use. Now everyone from food cart vendors to personal instructors can accept credit cards, said Dorsey.
   In addition to revolutionizing payment devices, Dorsey is trying to revolutionize how credit card fees are charged to merchants. Currently merchants must pay hidden fees to subsidize customers’ credit card rewards, said Dorsey. With Square’s 2.75 percent fee per swipe or a flat $275 monthly usage fee, merchants get to keep more of their profits.
   ”It’s the first innovation in pricing in 62 years,” said Dorsey. “You’re not just building a credit card terminal, you’re not just building a cash register, you’re building something to solve [merchants’] business problems.”
   For customers, Square offers its Pay With Square service. Customers can search for participating merchants by downloading the Square app, order and pay for an item online, and then walk into the store to pick up their order.
   ”That’s what commerce should be,” said Dorsey. “When you buy a song on iTunes, you don’t think about how you’re paying for it. You shouldn’t think about the mechanics of it.”
   Despite the changes Square is making in how people think about transactions, Dorsey thinks the true beauty lies in bringing attention back to the interaction between consumers and merchants, rather than payment systems.
   ”We’re not just building a utility. We want to build a beautiful utility that makes commerce easy, that fades away when it needs to but that people really appreciate,” he said.