Square revamps payer app, launches on Android

SAN FRANCISCO -- Square just upped the ante in its budding rivalry with PayPal over consumers and merchants in the multibillion-dollar mobile payments business.

The company co-founded by Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey has renamed its Card Case payer application — it's now Pay with Square — added new features to it, and fashioned an Android app to go along with its iOS version for Apple products.

All told, the moves are expected to give it an added advantage as it tries to redefine how consumers use its quarter-sized, credit-card swapping device. Last week, PayPal unveiled its own mobile-payment device to compete with Square.

The renamed Pay with Square — used by 75,000 merchants — now comes with a simpler user interface, a new search bar and map view, and the ability for customers to share their comments about merchants via email, Twitter or SMS.

The announcement comes hot on the heels of Square's introduction of Register, a cash register-like app for iPad. The company is already on pace to help merchants process sales for $4 billion worth of goods — double what it announced late last year.

Still, it faces formidable competition from PayPal, the de facto standard for processing payments online that was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.