Square mobile payments have now launched in Australia

Square Inc. mobile payments nfc technology

The smartphone based transaction company has now launched its services into a fourth marketplace.

Square has now launched its mobile payments services into its fourth marketplace, as it has stepped into Australia, giving small businesses in that country the opportunity to use their smartphones and tablets as credit card reading point of sale devices.

The other countries in which the service is available include the United States, Japan and Canada.

This announcement arrived nearly immediately before Square was to make the announcement of its first earnings report since the mobile payments services company made its IPO, last November. The company was founded in 2009, when Jack Dorsey – best known for being one of the founders of Twitter – brought the United States a sleek little white dongle for smartphones based on Android or iOS and that would allow virtually anyone to accept payments via credit cards.

Since then, Square has expanded the number of devices with which its mobile payments are compatible.

Square Inc. mobile payments nfc technologyFor Australians who are interested in taking advantage of what Square has to offer, they will be able to purchase the reader for their mobile devices for a one-time fee of $19. From that time, Square takes 1.9 percent of every transaction. This is a different strategy from the one established in the United States, where customers receive the reader gadget for free (or for $99 for full-sized registers). That said, in the U.S., the per-transaction fee is notably higher, at 2.75 percent.

The new contactless payments reader from Square is not yet available in Australia. This has launched in the United States, where a $49 chip card and NFC reader can be purchased by merchants who want to accept contactless and chip card payments.

That NFC technology reader also makes it possible for the device to be able to accept Apple Pay based mobile payments. While that iPhone transaction service did launch in Australia earlier this year, it will not yet be accepted by Square in the country. This lack of NFC is important to note as data published in the Sydney Herald Tribune indicated that 60 to 70 percent of Visa and MasterCard transactions in the country use that tech.

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