Billionaire Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wants to arm UK independent retailers with the tools he feels they need to take on Amazon and other online giants.
Also head and founder of payments company Square, Dorsey told Pocket-lint that offline commerce will never die, not least because of the humble, English public: “No matter what moves online, the pub isn’t moving online. You’re still going to show up there, you’re still going to meet your friends, partners, colleagues. There will always be a role for the offline,” he said.
Mr Jack Dorsey sounds like a man who thinks because shops are going online the remaining world will be a desert awaiting human touch. A few questions for the readers. Does Jack think the world will quickly become like the world Steve Spielberg created in Ready Player one where we will not like to deal too much with reality because it is not as good as the virtual space? Does this man really even think that he can go up against a platform like Amazon that keeps adding getting bigger year after year. Jack Dorsey is this hugely successful guy no doubt but can we forget that a whole Google has trashed more than 50 of their released products(sadly) since they began in 1998. There really is no magic sauce or guess work except when you give the people that product, they want from you and need from you. It does not matter who you are, you cannot go wrong when you give people what they want. Not, your idea of an ideal word Sirs and Mas.
The idolised, beanie-wearing chief is in the United Kingdom for London Tech Week, which runs until Sunday 16 June. His main goal this year is to explain the benefits of using Square and how it can help small businesses take money when a customer only has a card or their phone rather than cash.
“I don’t think cash will ever go away, but I think it will be used significantly less in the future,” he told journalists at the event.
Dorsey co-created Square when he noticed the shift from paper money to credit cards over 10 years ago. Since that time, the company’s box of magic tricks, the Square reader, has blossomed into something of great benefit to independent shopkeepers.
“It started when a friend of mine said that he lost a sale because he couldn’t take a card for a piece of art he was selling,” he claimed.
The Square card reader combines with a smartphone to enable retailers, big and small, to take credit and debit card payments without having to sign contracts with big banks. It, said Dorsey, is transforming retail around the world, all for the cost of a 2.75 per cent charge on each transaction.
“Cash is inconvenient, it can be easily stolen, it can be lost. It is hard to store it in places. It can get dirty,” he continued. “All these things can be solved by something much more personal on your phone or on your card.” “We want to optimise that, but I don’t think we should be willing to displace completely everything – just displace the majority behaviour.”
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