All the art festival or gallery owners here - anyone got the Square yet? If so, I am curious to know if you liking it or not - any issue? I am probably going to get one for the next year/season, so doing some research
Patricia - Square is a small device to accept credit card payments using your smartphone. See the link
https://squareup.com/
Posted by Mike Moats on October 7, 2010 at 12:23 PM
Hey Arnab, it looks like a cool idea, but only drawback I see would be the customer doesn't get a receipt, or does it have some kind of small hook-up for a little printer.
Posted by Luke Ormand on October 7, 2010 at 12:31 PM
Mike,
From what I understand (I haven't used Square) is that a reciept can be automatically e-mailed to the buyer (once they give you the e-mail address) via the smartphone. I would guess that if your phone/printer have capabilities to sync, it could also be printed out but I don't know how many people are going to lug printers to their booths... e-mailed reciepts work great for me, it's how Apple handles theres for in-store purchases.
I guess you can email the receipt to the customer. I am not sure..but if you are using something like Propay to process transactions over phone, the same problem exists. What do you do in that case - in terms of giving customers a receipt? I know many just use a card imprinter and give them a receipt - you can do the same here as well
My day job is in Payments industry - so technologies like these are also some of the things that I track as part of my day job. This thing had very high demand (founded by the same guy who created Twitter) and they were short of supply - now they have caught up with it - so I am assuming that many have started using it out there. I am wondering whether people in this forum have got some hands on experience.
We're still carrying a card swiper off site like we did back "in the day" when we did art shows. Cell service is intermittent to unavailable in many areas we work, so we're not likely to change soon. On the down side, we can't call for authorization when we swipe until we're back in phone range. It works, but if you're confident in wireless security, the electronic process would be real convenient even when emailing receipts.
Hank: there are 2 main shortcomings of your method - 1)if the card is denied or chargeback happens, you are going to lose it everytime (I hope it does not happen w/you too much), 2) rate when one swips a card (as opposed to number entered manually) is more favorable for merchants as for processors, it's less risky (it shows that the card was present)
So the instant authorization with swipped device is something that can give you the best rate - but the wireless devices that do exist in the market as of now are expensive to carry for many small merchants and "square" supposed to solve that problem (well..Intuit's gopayment came up with a similar device for iphone 3 as well)
1)if the card is denied or chargeback happens, you are going to lose it everytime (I hope it does not happen w/you too much)
It certainly helps that we live on an island! And I'm REALLY good at collections.
But our reality is such that most folks in "the real world" would be throwing tantrums and looking for a new carrier if they had cell/wireless coverage as spotty as ours. Even if the square service was free and flawless, I'd have to resort to swiping much of the time.
I bet there are lots of places with spotty or poor reception, even in major population areas. I'd sure be carrying a swiper even with the square. Otherwise if the square doesn't work, you just hung out the NO SALE sign.
Just got mine and my first show of season is the weekend of the 22nd. One issue I realized that is unfortunate, it seems no way to handle internet orders with square. Card must always be present, or at least a customer signature...so I can't cancel my other service just yet, because it gives me a virtual terminal.
How long did you wait Paul (to get the equipment)? Let us know how it goes on 22nd..
Square is a POS (point of sale) device - so I am not surprised that it does not have a mechanism for internet order (that's been solved a long time ago anyway )
It was months Arnab, but I think it is going faster now. Will do on the show.
How do you take care of internet/phone orders? Paypal? I need to look into it better, but if paypal has something that would work, I could cut out about $23 a month in fees.
Posted by Jim Bennett on October 18, 2011 at 7:11 PM
I use Square for my credit card transactions and it works great! There's no monthly fee, whether you use the card or not. You can swipe the card with their free reader that plugs into a smartphone or enter the card information using the keypad. (The transaction fee is a little higher if you don't swipe the card.) That means that you can use Square for Internet or phone orders. You can also use it for a cash transaction, just to provide an e-receipt and have that transaction record in your Square account. You can immediately send the customer an e-receipt by e-mail or text message.
My credit transactions are directly deposited into my checking account within usually two days.
Discussion
13 repliesthanks
https://squareup.com/
From what I understand (I haven't used Square) is that a reciept can be automatically e-mailed to the buyer (once they give you the e-mail address) via the smartphone. I would guess that if your phone/printer have capabilities to sync, it could also be printed out but I don't know how many people are going to lug printers to their booths... e-mailed reciepts work great for me, it's how Apple handles theres for in-store purchases.
My day job is in Payments industry - so technologies like these are also some of the things that I track as part of my day job. This thing had very high demand (founded by the same guy who created Twitter) and they were short of supply - now they have caught up with it - so I am assuming that many have started using it out there. I am wondering whether people in this forum have got some hands on experience.
We're still carrying a card swiper off site like we did back "in the day" when we did art shows. Cell service is intermittent to unavailable in many areas we work, so we're not likely to change soon. On the down side, we can't call for authorization when we swipe until we're back in phone range. It works, but if you're confident in wireless security, the electronic process would be real convenient even when emailing receipts.
So the instant authorization with swipped device is something that can give you the best rate - but the wireless devices that do exist in the market as of now are expensive to carry for many small merchants and "square" supposed to solve that problem (well..Intuit's gopayment came up with a similar device for iphone 3 as well)
It certainly helps that we live on an island! And I'm REALLY good at collections.
But our reality is such that most folks in "the real world" would be throwing tantrums and looking for a new carrier if they had cell/wireless coverage as spotty as ours. Even if the square service was free and flawless, I'd have to resort to swiping much of the time.
I bet there are lots of places with spotty or poor reception, even in major population areas. I'd sure be carrying a swiper even with the square. Otherwise if the square doesn't work, you just hung out the NO SALE sign.
Square is a POS (point of sale) device - so I am not surprised that it does not have a mechanism for internet order (that's been solved a long time ago anyway
How do you take care of internet/phone orders? Paypal? I need to look into it better, but if paypal has something that would work, I could cut out about $23 a month in fees.
My credit transactions are directly deposited into my checking account within usually two days.