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Square Inc., a start-up promising simple payment card acceptance for merchants, will adhere to Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council requirements, Jack Dorsey, Square co-founder, tells TechCrunch, a online technology news site. Square intends to sell or give away card readers that attach to a smartphone's audio jack and provide free software that enables merchants to accept card payments without having a dedicated merchant account (CardLine, 12/4). In a video posted on YouTube Thursday, Dorsey was asked to respond to VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s announcement of Payware Mobile for mobile phones (CardLine, 12/9) and a statement from VeriFone CEO Douglas G. Bergeron that "banks and processors are concerned about security issues of unapproved merchants using unregulated software and insecure fobs to accept card payments." Dorsey did not respond directly to Bergeron's statement but told TechCrunch: "Everything we're doing will be in compliance with PCI Level 1. We're under the same compliance as someone like VeriFone. From the outside, it looks like we haven't gone through the work to actually verify everything. But we're heavily regulated just like VeriFone. And we're going through all the compliance and managing the fraud and risk and all those aspects that go along with this business." Asked whether Square would be like PayPal in that sellers could accept payment cards through PayPal without having a dedicated merchant account, Dorsey responded: " Absolutely." Card brands' rules require anyone accepting their cards to have merchant accounts with an acquiring bank. It is unclear how Square would bypass that rule.
