With the release of Square, you will soon be able to take payments from your iPhone and eventually other phones will follow. Imagine you are at an off-site event, art festival, concert, fundraiser, or farmer’s market. People don’t carry cash like they used to so, too often opportunities are lost for the budding merchant, small business, or non-profit. The device is so inexpensive to manufacture that we can expect it being virtually free since the revenue will come from transaction fees. I do think the greatest hurdle is not technology integration, ease of use, marketing, or pricing but rather overcoming consumer fears about swiping their credit card data to a stranger’s phone. The fear of fraud, stolen identities, access to bank accounts will slow the adoption of Square and other forthcoming solutions that allow micropayments. Our cost-conscious, $.99, I-want-it-for-free culture has forced the industry to come up with a solution for micropayments since so much content that was previously considered a premium has become devalued and commoditized. Square and micropayments are an eventuality but I won’t be handing my Visa over to anyone for quite some time.