Square’s payment acceptance comes to Android, promising merchants the ability to sell without extra hardware

Square now allows Australian merchants to accept payments on Android smartphones, extending the reach of the next-generation payments technology on home soil and the offerings of a company synonymous with physical card readers.

Tap to Pay on Android officially launched Wednesday night, allowing sellers to receive payments on eligible smartphones running the Square POS app without extra hardware.

The system comes at no extra cost to Square merchants, with the company claiming sellers can begin accepting payments within minutes of activation.

Marco Lamantia, head of industry relations and operations at Square in Australia, said the system will grant merchants a new level of mobility.

“It really could be quite a large seller who has a retail footprint, and they’ve now got the ability to walk the floor and start accepting payments directly from their customers wherever they may be,” Lamantia told SmartCompany.

Merchants who work remotely could also benefit from the system, he added, highlighting tradespeople like locksmiths as a particular target market for the system.

In Tap to Pay on Android, Square becomes one of the first tranche of financial services providers to offer Android smartphone payment acceptance in Australia.

NAB launched its Android payment acceptance system in October, with bank leadership saying market vendors, coffee shops, and hairdressers — historically among Square’s core users — were perfectly suited to the new technology.

Responding to NAB’s earlier forays into the space, Lamantia said Square offers an entirely different proposition to small businesses.

“Square isn’t a payments business, we really are a software business,” he said.

“And so whilst we started with payments, that’s how we entered Australia today, we’re a lot more than that.”

Square now offers upwards of 30 distinct products to Australian users, stemming from team management to loans.

While those back-end solutions are in play, Square’s existing POS systems likely remain the most recognisable products offered by the company.

Despite the mobility provided by the new Android system, Lamantia said it would not cannibalise the market for Square’s existing products.

“We see this solution as another tool in the tool shed for our sellers,” he said.

While Android payment acceptance is gaining popularity in the Australian market, payment acceptance on Apple devices, which still make up 44% of all new phones sold in Australia, is a more distant prospect.

“We’re always looking for ways to lower the barriers to accept payments for our sellers,” Lamantia said.

“And so while we’re excited about the prospects of tap to pay on iPhone, we don’t have anything to share right now.”