Mobile payments giant Square launches debit card
Square, perhaps best known for the credit and debit card reading iPad based terminals that have popped up at small coffee shops and the like in the last several years, has introduced a debit card that is available to everyone. The key feature of the card is that it lets you spend money directly out of your Square account, rather than having to transfer it to a bank account first.
This is especially important since Square has added personal money transfers in addition to business payments. With this card, they hope to beat out Venmo, who is more established in the person-to-person money transfer space. While Venmo allows money to be sent from phone to phone, they have yet to deploy physical debit cards. Since the debit card is associated with a regular debit card number it can be used for online purchases that don’t support systems like Apple Pay.
