Hungry for payments innovation? Great! Will that be for pickup or delivery? Two payments startups, Square and LevelUp, announced extensions to their platforms today that take them beyond the point-of-sale, and both have to do with ordering food. Square already has services beyond the point-of-sale, such as Square Cash, a person-to-person payments service, and Square Market, an online emporium powered by Square. The San Francisco-based payment processor is now piloting Square Pickup, a service that lets users order and pay for items using the Square App. The item is then readied for pickup at the store. The next logical step, of course, would be Square Delivery. Square Pickup is being piloted in 11 San Francisco restaurants and puts Square in competition with Seamless, which recently filed to make an initial public offering, and similar apps, but it could certainly extend beyond just food in the future. If Square began delivering items from Square Market sellers, it would be getting into Amazon territory. And delivering from brick-and-mortar sellers would certainly be a service payment processors like First Data do not offer. Square also acquired online scheduling and appointment app BookFresh this week, and while the companies are being kept separate for [...]
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