The Californian payments technology company, Square, yesterday announced that it would begin selling its point of sale solution in Australia - which becomes its fourth national market after the USA, Canada and Japan.  The Square Reader is designed to connect via a headphone jack to allow the user to accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express credit or debit card payments on a smartphone or tablet device. Sellers pay 1.9 per cent on each transaction, no matter which card is processed, and funds are deposited into any Australian bank account. Square's Australian Country Manager Ben Pfisterer said the company had been operating locally for the past year "to develop active partnerships with a wide range of businesses that have in turn helped us test and refine a range of exciting payment solutions designed specifically for the Australian market." One of the firms Square has "partnered" with is Australian transactional banking services company Cuscal. Neither company was forthcoming on exactly how this would work. Likewise, cloud-based accounting software firm Xero been knocking on the Square door for a while.  The software firm says business owners using Xero will now be able to connect their Square account to their accounting dashboard in less than five minutes, cutting down manual data entry and bank reconciliation.  Square enters an already crowded small business payments market, with the major banks and Paypal already entrenched with devices allowing their mobile business customers to make and accept payments from just about anywhere via a smartphone - and not just via clip-on or plug in devices. ANZ's FastPay app, for instance needs no more than a smart phone.