Dive Brief:
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Square Wallet, a mobile payment app released in 2011 by Twitter inventor and Square developer Jack Dorsey, is no longer available because not enough consumers and retailers used it.
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Square Wallet stored credit card information and allowed mobile users to pay at retailers accepting Square Wallet with just their names.
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Opening Square Wallet showed users nearby shops that would accept it as payment and reviewers hailed it as a well designed payment system.
Dive Insight:
Square Wallet was an elegant payment solution that could have solved a lot of credit card problems faced by retailers and their customers. But perhaps the technology leap-frogged too quickly into ease of use — users wouldn’t even have to take out their phone, much less their actual wallet.
The problem was that Square Wallet was fairly useless without enough participating retailers to make it appealing to consumers. Not even Square’s biggest client, Starbucks, which has boosted loyalty by using Square, cottoned to Square Wallet.