So there I was, sitting in a cab in Austin, Texas. Just hours before I was on a roof terrace at a tech event, where Cole Worley gave me a quick demo of Square – the amazing payment systems for iPhones that turns your iPhone into a a device that allows you to accept credit card payments. I was fascinated by how smooth the payment process with the Square app was.

So there I was, in the back of the car, playing around on my iPad. I had no more cash in my pocket so I asked the driver if he accepted credit cards. He showed me his huge, credit card payment system (there’s a reason they call it knuckle buster – see image). I asked him if he ever heard of Square. No. He was in his fourties, and a family father, as he later explained. So I started telling him about how it’s a payment system that doesn’t charge a minumum fee. Only a percentage of the total amount paid (2.75% at the time of writing) . Traditional card processing companies charge people  base fees, no matter how little the amount you pay is. Since a taxi driver takes a lot of small payments, that may well affect his payroll.

That caught his attention. And when I told him that Square is just an adapter you plug into you iPhone, I thought he would not like that. But the opposide was the case. He was really happy, because I just gave him a reason to finally get an iPhone without getting in trouble for wasting money. A reason his wife would ok as he told me, because it’s a business related purchase that’ll make him earn more money. I’m not sure if he actually started using Square, but it sure made me think.

Do we always really realize who’s actually making the decision for purchases? Can we increase market shares by looking at who else might be involved in the decision making process?