Twitter founder signs up to iPhone mag-stripe reader

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, has launched a mag-stripe reader for the iPhone, proving you don't need a good idea to garner VC dollars. Dorsey's "Square" service comprises a magnetic strip reader balanced precariously on the bottom of an iPod Touch, or iPhone, along with an application which processes the transaction and …

[Jez Caudle]

Photo on the card.

I had my photo on the back of my Gold credit card when having a gold credit card meant something - i.e. I was loaded. This was the golden age of IT in the run up to the dot com bubble burst.

I had put my card behind the bar and drunk a good bottle and a half of red wine myself when I went to check out at the end of the night.

I'm not sure if the bar maid really was pretty or if it was the booze but she looked like an angel. When she asked me which card was mine I said: The gold one <pause for effect> with my picture on the back.

Didn't do me any good. I went home alone.

[Carl W]

Apple Store?

Pretty sure they use something iPhone-based with equivalent functionality to this in the Apple Store in Regent Street. But it's not as ugly. And why do we need swipe and signature in the chip 'n' PIN world?

[michael W]

oldy worldy

American doesn't use chip and pin, they still rely on signatures

[Richard 31]

Time to use?

Wouldn't any place that one of these things also already have a normal chip and pin reader? Might help at market stalls and the like where power and normal phone lines are hard to come by though.

Using the mag stripe seems a bit 1970s, why not include something that can read the new wave of contact-less things too?

[Lance Wantenaar]

Card cloners wetdream

He has just created a tool that is any card cloners wet dream. straightforward with many people not asking why its being swiped through an iphone....

[Anonymous Coward]

Card Skimming?

There's an app for that.

[Matthew Anderson]

Vid

Did you see the video of it in action? Flimsy lookin' thing, fiddly to use and by the looks of it a complete laugh in the face of us with no millions to waste on daft ideas.

Stick to Twitter dude, this one aint gonna float.

[Dave Ockwell-Jenner]

Payment card security

So... how on earth can this solution be compliant with PCI requirements?

[nsld]

@payment card security

That would depend on the application using the card details.

That said the hardware would have to be certified which costs about £150 a year.

Given the SDK of the jesus phone lets app writers lift data its a cloners dream.

Paris - looks flimsy as well

[Jason Croghan]

Pin?

When he introduces Chip & Pin functionality, would you really be happy tapping your ping into someones iPhone? Now that is hillarious!

[Goat Jam]

Teh Audio Jack

is on the top of an iPhone, is it not?

Paris, uhhh, and jacking, mmmmm

[miknik]

For the sake of a tenner a month...

...I'll keep my PDQ machine. Thanks anyway.