Why Jack Dorsey’s squirrely iPhone payment app won’t succeed

First let’s clear up what it is that Jack Dorsey, better known for being one of the main people behind Twitter, is up to with a new project that has been making the rumor mill circuit of the tech blogosphere. From what Pete Cashmore posted today at Mashable it is going to be a mobile payment system called Square iPhone Payment System and has gone public today.

There is only one problem with what is being shown to us and it could very well spell a dead horse right out of the gate. The whole payment system revolves around the use of a small dongle that attaches to your iPhone that you use as a card swipe.

Excuse me but did somewhere give the 80’s and 90’s a sudden reboot?

If there is one thing that the software and hardware world has learned over the years it is that when it comes to the consumer marketplace dongles do not succeed. Period.

I can’t count the number of times over the last 20 years of being in this business that I have seen companies try to use dongles for everything from software distribution to being an archaic form of DRM. Some of the best known software companies in the world thought dongles were the answer for everything only to find out that the only thing they were good for was losing customers.

This is an old idea that didn’t work anytime previously when it was tried and it won’t work this time around.

A dongle … jeezzz .. how Computer 1.0 can you get.

image courtesy of Mashable