Ryan Kim for GigaOM:

SAIL’s user agreement, however, did more than reuse “industry-acceptable language.” More than half of the sentences at the heart of the user agreement were lifted directly from Square’s legal agreement with almost no alterations. It swapped out all the references to Square and included some original language. And some of the sentences and sections were moved around. But the language was a word-for-word match in numerous sections, including one stretch of more than a dozen sections that were taken directly from Square.

Ryan continues by quoting both Square’s and Verifone’s user agreements. It is chocking to see that the only differences between the two excerpts are the company names.

This is preoccupying, even if terms and conditions are not that big of a deal in my opinion, because it is the sign that Verifone rushed to launch its product. It looks like they did not have the time to even write the user agreements. As a whole, it does serve them, but reinforces Square. If you are copied, doesn’t it mean that you’re doing better?