Dec 9th 2013, 00:30, by Darrell Etherington
Square has a cryptic teaser on Vine published today that suggests it’ll show us… something on Monday. There’s little about the short video that offers any clue about what could be revealed, except that it fits in a balled fist. But maybe it’s conceptual, so it would technically “fit” anywhere. IT’S A MYSTERY.
An intriguing possibility is that Square is somehow going to update its credit card dongle for smartphones, which has remained unchanged since its introduction in 2009. The design is iconic at this point, so it’s not really clear what they could change in a gen 2 product to really add value without changing things up too much.
Two more interesting possibilities based only on observation of the company so far come to mind, however: Square could be getting into chip-and-pin readers as it continues international expansion, or (and this is more of a fantastic theory) it could be building iBeacon transmitters to take advantage of Apple’s new tech to help give its merchant users another option for in-person marketing.
iBeacons and their ability to deliver hyper-local alerts and updates to shoppers in brick-and-mortar or shared retail settings, as at a flea market or festival, seems a very worthwhile addition to Square’s storefront software offerings. Based on the other iBeacons transmitters I’ve seen, one would definitely be palmable like the mystery thing in the video above.
In the end, whatever Square plans to show off tomorrow remains a mystery, but we’ll be watching Vine to see if it’s anything worth actually caring about.
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