Square's Card Case application is going hands free.

Though probably better knows as a mobile point of sale provider, Square rolled out a new update to its Card Case app, the mobile wallet application it introduced in May. Among various tweaks to the application, the most interesting change is that the application can now automatically open a tab at a merchant's location allowing for a payment to be made at the point of sale without the user's Card Case app even being open.

When originally launched, the Card Case app, which is associated with a payment card stored in the mobile wallet, allowed users to pay for purchases by pushing a payment to a merchant through a mobile device at the point of sale. The merchant would then see the Card Case payment on its own Card Case application, along with the customer's name and picture, and could accept the payment, prompting a receipt to be sent to the Card Case customer.

With the new update, the Card Case application uses location-based services to know when a user is at a merchant that accepts the Card Case for payment. The user can then simply tell the merchant to put the payment on his Card Case application. The merchant's Card Case application will then show a picture of the customer to verify the customer's identity. Once the merchant accepts the payment, a notification is pushed to the customer that a purchase has been made.

A video from Square showing its new Card Case features in action is below:

The upgrade is only compatible with devices using iOS 5 at the moment, but Square said it will be integrating the new feature in the Android version of the app soon.

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