The highly-touted Square Wallet isn’t working out so well, it turns out. After its launch in 2011, and support from Starbucks, the Wallet ultimately didn’t match the momentum of the company’s credit card reader, which has been a veritable success with small businesses. To match the success of the card reader, Square wants to overhaul its consumer strategy, replacing Square Wallet with Square Order, a simplified version of the Wallet that’s been in testing for a few months.
Order lets users order ahead at small businesses, and skip lines when you pick up your purchase. It also notifies users when their orders are ready. The added utility aims to attract new users as Square is baking in loyalty program and advertising opportunities which will warrant a substantially larger merchant fee of 8%. In general, Square’s issues have been more around their business model than user experience, so well see if Order will right the ship.
