Friday, August 16, 2013

Is Square "Western Union?"

Square, the mobile payment service, has been fined  $507,000 by Florida’s Office of Financial Regulation for operating a payment service without a money transmission license.

In other words, Square is being regulated like an entity used to send funds from one person to another, such as Western Union. Some of us think that is crazy. Square is a retailer cash register. 

But never underestimate the abiliy of an increasingly-overweight administrative state, and its legions of bureaucrats, to come up with new ways to control the lives of its citizens and impose new taxes (oh right, those are just "fees," not taxes) by fiat. 

Square is not a money transfer service, such as Western Union. It is a cash register. 

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