Mobile wallet app lets you pay by saying your name at checkout

Consumer Reports News: May 27, 2011 09:37 AM

The mobile payment startup Square has announced two apps for smart phones and tablets that work in conjunction to let you pay by simply giving a store clerk your name.

The apps, one for consumers, Card Case, and one for store owners, Register, take the place of a cash register, and are free on both Apple and Android-based devices. Consumers see a list of businesses in the vicinity that also use the Square payment system. Square also has a key-sized credit-card reader that plugs into your phone's audio jack, pictured to the right.

With the Square app, you store a chosen credit card, much like you would with PayPal. When it comes time to pay, the store clerk chooses your name from a list of shoppers who are logged in and in the vicinity. Your name is listed with your photo. You can only pay this way if you and your phone are both present.

For now, Square's payment services are only available at 50 businesses in New York, San Francisco, Washington, St. Louis and Los Angeles. However, Square is supposedly on track to process a million transactions in May, according to the New York Times.

Square is competing with Apple, Google and PayPal, plus other contenders to be a leader in mobile wallet technology, though some of the other companies are concentrating on different technology known as near-field communication, where a phone sends credit card information to the store.

In the meantime, other mobile wallet endeavors are still at the drawing board stage.

Square Will Let Shoppers Say Their Names to Pay [New York Times]

Square's Card Case app

—Maggie Shader