Last week I shared my incredible experience of mobile checkout at Sephora. In line with the subject, Square (which lets you accept payments on your smartphone via an external dongle) launched today a new Card Case payment system that turns your phone into a mobile wallet.

Sephora single-point-of-sale done wirelessly, using an iPhone.

My Anastasia Brow products (fav!) needed a refresh, so I took a power-walk up to the Sephora store on 57th and Lexington today. I did a little shopping and one of the sales reps came over asking if I needed any help.  I let her know I was okay (I know my way around a Sephora store!), so she asked if I was by chance ready to check out –I was.  Expecting she would ask me to walk over to the register, I was surprised when she pulled out her iPhone to check me out!

Everyone knows that the markets; the stock market, the bond market, currency markets, etc. are defined by ups and downs.

Nowhere else does a simple up or down arrow; a plain green or a red icon, have so much immediate force and presence in the human mind. It’s as if the entire world senses and perceives that tiny red down arrow, as a sign of impending doom, or as the very bringer of apocalypse (“the end of the world as we know it”).