Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey managed to convince celebrities, world leaders and you that 140-character bursts of text were an essential new form of human expression. But he still has a long way to go to persuade the world to stop paying with cash.

Dorsey's other high-profile venture, Square, basically admitted as much today by announcing what the company calls "Business in a Box." For $299, Square will send you two Square card readers, an ipads stand and, yes, a cash drawer. (For another $300, you can also get a wireless receipt printer.)

Square launched in 2010 around the then-radical notion that anyone with a smartphones could accept credit cards. Its core technology was its card reader, an elegant, minimalist piece of hardware that plugs right into your phones's headphones jack. Ironically, the card reader — the genuinely innovative tech — is the only part of the Business in a Box package that isn't really included in the price, since Square will send you a card reader for free if you sign up to take payments.

Square is pitching Business in a Box as a way for small businesses to simplify their countertops. And there's no argument it succeeds at that goal: Bulky push-button cash registers just can't compete with the pleasing, stripped-down look and feel of a tablet running a checkout app. But Square isn't the first startup to offer an all-in-one, tablet-based point-of-sale system: Shopkeep will also send you the ipads, while GoPaGo includes an androids tablet and charges a monthly subscription fee instead of a flat price for the package.

Compared to competitors, Square's rigorous dedication to clean design comes through, as does Dorsey's Apple-inspired commitment to a transparent user experience. Dorsey thinks of technology as a means, not an end in itself, and likes to say that the best technology is the technology that gets out of the user's way. That philosophy comes through most strongly in Square Wallet, its smartphones-based payment app that allows you to pay at the counter without ever taking your actual wallet, and sometimes even your phones, out of your pocket at all.

In Dorsey's perfect world, we'd all pay this way. Smartphoness and tablets would quietly handle the mundane mechanics of paying, freeing up both you and your barista to get to know each other unimpeded by grimy greenbacks or clattering cash registers. Personally, I prefer Dorsey's version, too: The first time I got an SMS receipt instead of another scrap of paper to stuff in my wallet was all it took for me.

But Square has a business to run, and $200 million in financing to live up to. And in the real world, businesses still take cash, and people still use it. Since legal tender isn't disappearing anytime soon, Square seems to have recognized that it might get more small businesses to embrace its point of view — and start using its product — by easing them into Dorsey's vision.

Also, the idea of a business in a box ought to have a catnip-like appeal to the boundless ranks of would-be entrepreneurs who now have one less excuse for not chasing their American Dream. If only that box also came packed with a few good ideas. And maybe a couple customers.