Review: Square – Credit Card Payment App/Service

As forewarning, this post isn’t about cameras. This post is about how to get paid for what you do with your camera. Specifically, how to take credit card payments. For those not aware, accepting credit card payments through traditional methods hasn’t been super hard but it wasn’t super friendly either. Businesses would typically sign up for a merchant account with a company that processes credit card payments for various credit companies. The usual arrangement is you pay a monthly fee to process payments, either buy or rent the equipment/terminal to run the payments, then you pay the credit card companies a base rate plus a certain percentage of each sale. When I was running my own videography business I wasn’t doing the kind of turnaround required to warrant a merchant account. I was booking about 15-20 gigs a year and it didn’t seem worth it to me to carry that monthly overhead. It seems like a lot of cost in my opinion to offer an extra service for my customers. As a last resort I accepted payment via PayPal, but that just never seemed as professional as I wanted it to.

The founders of Square had the same issue. As their website outlines, they were struggling artist who wanted to be able to accept payments from a larger audience. And like it or not, most of our world runs on plastic now. So Square started with a simple principle. Let anyone with a smartphone accept credit card payments without all the overhead and hassle of creating a merchant account. In my mind, they have exceeded. In my opinion, their is no better way to get started. Keep reading for more details.

So here is the deal. With Square, there is no monthly fee. There is no cost to buy special equipment. You get to use the smartphone or mobile device you already own. That includes all Apple iOS devices and Android devices. They send you the Square dongle (pictured above) that plugs into your headphone jack and that is all the hardware you need. The dongle works as a card reader so you can swipe cards where ever you have a data connection. Square manages all the interaction with the credit card companies and so you don’t have to fool with the details. They even provide you with the dongle at no charge and no shipping cost. The only thing you pay is a $0.15 fee per transaction + 2.75% of the sale if you swipe the card using the dongle (or 3.5% of the sale if you enter the card info manually). There really is no catch.

In testing the system it works flawlessly. You just enter the amount you charge and swipe the card. It tells you if the card is declined or if it is accepted. If accepted the buyer uses their finger to sign to screen, and the you hit continue to process the payment. Done with no fuss.

The account setup was super easy. I installed the app on my iPad and iPhone. Then I setup my new account. Square will send you an email and ask you to complete a certain portion of the registration from a computer rather than the app. I was able to do it just fine from my iPad browser. They can either send you the money you make via check or you can link up your bank account. They use the standard banking process of making a few small deposits for you to verify your banking account. Within a few day your bank account is ready to go. You can however start accept payments immediately after installing the app and completing account setup, even if you don’t have your dongle. It took only a few days for the free card reading dongle to arrive via USPS and Square kept me in the loop via email the entire time.

It is important that you follow the rules setup by Square in order to process payments. The big rule is offering receipts to your customers. There rules are as follows (This is copied directly from the Square website.)….

Receipts

When your customer is present at the time of the transaction and signs the Square electronic receipt, you benefit from the Payment Network rules for card present transactions. You agree to request that your customer personally signs for all transactions greater than $25.00 when your customer is present.

If you operate a 501(c)(3) organization you may offer Square electronic receipts to your donors as a convenience, by completing the required fields in the “Tax and Reporting” section of our website. You acknowledge that not all payments made to your organization will be eligible for classification as “tax deductible to the extent allowed by law”, and you assume full responsibility for the classification of your transactions. Square specifically disclaims any liability in this regard.

You shall make a written receipt available to your customers for any transaction valued greater than fifteen dollars ($15.00). You may give your customers the option to receive or decline a written receipt. As a convenience, but not in lieu of a written receipt, you may also offer Square electronic receipts for delivery through SMS or email to your customers.

There are all kind of other details on their website about how they handle disputed charges, charge backs, holds, etc, but it’s all on the up and up. You can read all the details in their TOS, but I doubt it will be an issue for anyone. They will allow you to charge as much as you need per transaction, but they only deposit $1001 dollars at a time. If you charge more than that, the remaining balance will be deposited to your account at some point over the following 30 days. This makes a great solution for someone that makes a lot of small transactions or a few large transactions each month. If you do more business than that or can’t wait for the cash to come to you, they do offer rates with a monthly fee to process more money after further credit checking.

Overall I was impressed with what they offer. For someone just starting out, it would make a great solution. I sell enough photography equipment and have enough small photography sessions that it will be extremely useful to me. My experience has been nothing but positive so far, and I’d recommend it to any artist wanting to move their sales to the next level. Check out the screenshots below from the iPhone app.