Square Goes Cardless, Samsung Gets Retinal And Gmail Goes Mobile

In something of a strange switch for the news media last week, reporters nationwide decided to split their time between covering both the immediate past and the immediate future.

A person who has been watching CNN, MSNBC or Fox News out of the corner of their eye for the last six or seven days might quite understandably believe that a debate between the two presidential candidates happened at some point last week.

It didn’t, of course — the big show is tonight — but given the amount of air time it’s already gotten, confusion would be understandable. And the excitement itself is not totally out of line, especially if the debate actually produces the 80–100 million viewers some are predicting.

That said, we can also imagine that, at this point, a large proportion of the news-consuming public would like to know at least as much about what actually did happen last week as they now know about what might happen next week.

And lucky for those readers, we have the Data Dive, where no tea leaves will need to be read. But we will know how Square is raising the in-store payments game for SMBs, how Samsung is changing the topic and how Google is (finally) proudly welcoming Gmail to the year 2010 with mobile upgrades.

We don’t make predictions, but we have the data you need to make better ones.

Square Gets Competitive

Square’s road since its initial public offering has been to expand its portfolio of SMB offerings so that it can scale as its SMB businesses do. Over the years, Square has been buffeted by a variety of headwinds and challenges — not the least of which is imitation. Square may have planted the mPOS seed in the ecosystem’s collective consciousness, but a quick glance at PYMNTS monthly mPOS Tracker quickly indicates it’s far from the only farmer these days.

Nor is it the biggest. It’s attracted some very robust competition.

But as of late, Square itself seems to be moving toward a more robustly competitive posture.

In its latest move, Square wants to help its partners do slightly better than keep their customers’ emails on file. The newest service it is rolling out will allow consumers who frequent certain shops to pay with the information from cards they have already used.

Card-on-file comes to the physical store.

Square’s Card on File stores customers’ payment information for future use, with a few caveats. First, the system (as you would expect) is designed to work with the customer’s permission — and only with customer permission. Merchants also have to opt in and can do so selectively with their customers.

Once permission is granted, Card on File is designed to allow businesses using this service to charge customers without requiring any further action from them. No card, no phone, no swipe, dip or tap. No additional equipment required. The service will work through the in-store option Square Register, Square Invoices and Square’s eCommerce API. Businesses can use Card on File to charge remote customers from their stores.

“Customers love going where everybody knows their name — it establishes familiarity that instills trust in a business,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Simple and effective tools for sellers can help build this rapport, deepening relationships with regular customers in a way that doesn’t take time away from running a successful business. Card on File gives sellers the ability to provide an even higher level of personalized service and makes accepting payment significantly easier.”

Will it work? That is the big question, which hinges on whether or not customers are as comfortable using a feature they’ve probably used a million times online in the physical store.

But anyone with a taste for television news these days might have noticed that Square is working hard to build that comfort by becoming a bit more part of public consciousness. The marketing blitz got underway this summer, mainly centered in the Pacific Northwest, particularly Portland. The marketing drive is now pushing out nationwide — mainly on cable.

Keep your eyes peeled, and you can see Square’s take on making payments in all their forms (swipe, dip and tap) seem folksy and charming.

Or you can watch it here — if you can’t bear to endure any more cable news.

Samsung Goes Retinal

There is nothing worse than getting one’s shiny new gadget out to market only to have all the news be about its flaws instead of all of its wonderful new features. This is doubly true when said flaws involve words like “fire,” “explosion” or “FAA ban.” It’s pretty bad when part of the in-flight announcements include warnings to power down your Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones when on board and make sure passengers don’t include them as part of their checked luggage.

But there is only so long the bad news can dominate everything, and this week saw Samsung getting some phone feedback that had nothing to do with liability.

Nope, this week was all about how Samsung is all about getting cutting-edge with security for Samsung Pay — and perhaps looking to leapfrog the hackable fingerprint scanning tech currently en vogue. The next contender for securing the devices that are increasingly repositories of sensitive information?

Eye-scanning — and hold the eye-rolls.

According to recent reports, Samsung Pay version 2.3 will allow a variation on retinal payments. With a big “if:” Customers must have a Galaxy Note 7.

Sales of the flagship Galaxy Note 7 are currently on hold due to a defect in the battery with unfortunate incendiary results. The company sold 2.5 million units since the phone’s launch on Aug. 19 and had to recall them across 10 countries. Things got worse for the world’s leading smartphone maker after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall for Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 phone.

Undaunted, Samsung is carrying on in its expansion of Samsung Pay around the world. Samsung Pay saw its first European launch in Spain over the summer and even managed to beat Apple into the market.

“Our goal with Samsung Pay is to drive and lead innovation in mobile commerce, giving consumers a safer, smarter and better mobile wallet,” Victor Kim, global director of Samsung Pay, explained in a press release.

Paying with one’s eyeball works much like using fingerprint authentication. After a user makes a purchase with their phone, via the Samsung Pay app, they can then choose to authenticate the payment with the iris scanner. According to Samsung, each device can only be programmed for one set of eyes. It is also “impossible to trick” the device with a photo, according to Samsung.

We hope those don’t prove to be famous last words.

Gmail Goes Mobile

While apps and chatbots are fighting for commerce dominance, email doesn’t get much attention since email marketing can seem so 10 years ago.

But Google — controller of dominant email platform Gmail — cares very much about email and its potential for marketers. And after years of complaints from marketers about the troubles with Gmail on mobile, Google has announced responsive design for email.

“Finally” seems to have been the collective response. More than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, meaning the update is long overdue. Aaron Pearson, a product manager at email service provider Listrak, noted that Google’s efforts really link up with what has already been the long trend in email marketing.

“If your emails are optimized for mobile today, regardless of the responsive method they are built with, Gmail’s update will finally support the hard work you invested in developing your template,” Pearson said.

Going forward, emails will automatically format themselves to the screen of the device they are being viewed on. Email developers will be able to easily change styles based on the characteristics of the device accessing an email, including display type, width, height, orientation and resolution, Google said.

Email drives around 3 percent of a retailer’s web traffic. Moreover, Google noted, the latest updates are part of its efforts to expand and evolve its relationships with retailers and developers.

“This is just one part of an overall effort to expand CSS support in Gmail and to give email designers more control over how their messages are rendered,” Google said in its official apps developer blog.

So, what did we learn last week? Weirdly, a similar message we got from the rest of the news media: It’s all about looking forward. Square is thinking past dipping and tapping to nothing to point and click on a screen. Samsung is skipping past the fingerprint (as soon as it can get its phones to work) to the eyes and Gmail — well, OK, it’s mostly catching up with the email thing. But at least it’s making the jump.

‘Til next week.