Mobile payments company Square introduced a new Merchant Case at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas yesterday and, boy, is it ugly. It’s that oddly-shaped black piece of rubber wrapped around the iPhone at left. This is not just some device built by a third-party that accommodates Square’s reader — Square was on board with this. It is part of a wider initiative to serve merchants in partnership with hardware makers, and reinforces that Square itself has gone beyond being merely a hardware company. Designed to “enhance both performance and convenience for merchants selling on the go with Square” and to keep the white dongle from sliding around as the card is swiped, the case was created in partnership with Griffin Technology, a maker of mobile phone cases and charging systems. Griffin makes a wide variety of cases primarily for iOS devices, so they’re no stranger to design-conscious consumers. But with the Merchant Case it seems no consideration was given to Square’s normally fastidious aesthetic beyond making a dongle-shaped indent in the black rubber case. Square recently designed its dongle to make it more functional. Its Square Stand product was designed in-house and was quickly mimicked by products such as First Data’s [...]
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