The big buzz in the start-up world is mobile communication, whether it's to find things, opt in to special deals from marketers, or conduct your buy/sell transactions from your iPhone.  In the last few months alone I have seen a number of these businesses--it's the wild West out there--but the jury is still out on which ones will stick and which will simply disappear. With a global mobile payments market expected to reach nearly 2 Trillion in the next decade, it's no wonder that entrepreneurs and investors are scrambling to find the platform that will become the standard.

Just last week a San Francisco-based start-up launched its mobile payments technology, generating more-than-average attention because its founder is Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey.  Square (http://squareup.com) enables anyone to accept credit cards for payment by connecting their reader to their mobile device.  So, say you are a street vendor or you sell your products at craft fairs, you would set up an account with Square; then to take a payment, you would simply swipe the buyer's credit card through the reader attached to your iPhone. Once accepted, the buyer submits his or her signature from the touchscreen. Square claims that you can complete a transaction in under 60 seconds, which is certainly important if your customers are impulse buyers. 

Seems simple enough. However, one of the biggest concerns in mobile payments is security.  People are nervous about who has access to their information and where it's being stored. Square uses encrypted protocols and doesn't store customer data on the device, which right now is an iPhone (they expect to expand to Blackberries and Androids in the near future).  Time will tell if this payment system will catch on.  It does have competition from technologies such as near-field wireless communication where you can simply point your phone at a reader.  Square is currently piloting its technology in four cities and expects to be available to everyone in 2010.  Stay tuned.