Clover vs. PayPal Payments Pro vs. Square POS

Clover is well suited for high-volume environments where quality and dependability are paramount. The hardware can scale easily and always looks good on the counter. I have even seen Clover hardware used in small mom-and-pop type stores. The ability to swing the monitor around for signature is really nice. Customers appreciate the ease of use. The stations we have to use nice large bright screens. Not familiar enough with the Clover product line to know if the smaller screen sizes are available for applications where space is a concern.

Incentivized

Paypal is great for personal payments as well as business payments for ecommerce of for paying monthly memberships. It is a user friendly software that needs little expertise to get used to. For larger payments, the fees become high therefore it is more suitable for payments of upto few hundred dollars.

Square POS is by far the easiest POS software to use at events and train additional team members on - even with temporary or first-time employees. It's easy to see how each event is doing in live time. It gives the event manager a real-time view of revenue earned. Its really easy to create/manage/delete users to keep the platform secure.

Incentivized

• BluePay has been very responsive when we've had questions and gone out their way to make sure that users understand the answers that are given.
• During our cut over to BluePay we found that there were reports that our users were used to having that didn't have an equivalent on BluePay's site. Our account rep went above and beyond to make sure that our users had the information that they needed by having custom reports sent on the schedule that we determined.
• Overall our interchange rates are much lower with BluePay than they were with our previous gateway provider.

Incentivized

• PayPal offers me the option of converting my currency deposited in my account to another currency, so I can complete all kinds of payments and send money to employees who are in another country for business reasons.
• The mobile phone application is too fast, I can make payments to my employees in a matter of seconds without having to wait for the web version to load.
• Scheduled payments are great. PayPal allows me to add a list of contacts to my PayPal Business account, and after adding the contacts, I can schedule payments for a specific day and time. It's easier to make automated payroll payments with PayPal.

Incentivized

• Mobile transactions (not like from a phone, but in terms of the ability to physically relocate rapidly).
• Simple setup.
• Generally uncomplicated pricing.
• Widespread customer familiarity: because it's so regularly in use in our industry (musicians/entertainment professionals), people know and trust it in a way that you might not with a different provider.

Incentivized

• Focus functionality on retail use and not broad based with focus on food services
• Build a turn table into the countertop unit so both the employee and customer can use the tablet
• Offer color choices in units (white is not always friendly with long term use)

Incentivized

• Sometimes the UX flow would not deliver the customer back to our site, leaving orders in limbo "Pre-approved" status. The customer would call days later asking why we hadn't shipped it.
• The PayPal logo on the checkout page can be kind of large and obtrusive.
• They mention new features and programs on their login page, but it's hard to find any details on them deeper in the software.

Incentivized

• Too much going on for simple users. There are so many different apps and pages now that I get lost almost every time I log onto Square
• The high percentage of fees taken from sales
• The difficulty in changing default settings
• The layout of the “website” you can create is truly a nightmare

Incentivized

I don't really foresee anything being able to dislodge Square from our organization—we're not evangelists or anything like that—it's just the best solution we've found for our use case. Being able to quickly handle transactions from customers and then track all of those sales for analysis/bookkeeping later on.

Incentivized

There are numerous aspects to Clover's usability: the usability of their point of sale systems, the usability of their CRM and web dashboards, and the technical side of integrating with other third-party services. All are top tier. Clover's usability is excellent and I have never had a problem figuring out how to use their services at any level. The POS system has a very low barrier to entry and an easy learning curve for newcomers.

Incentivized

We find Square POS is very user friendly. Its interface is customizable to our needs and very easy to use. Before we adopted Square POS, we used a combination of solutions from different manufacturer to try and achieve a portion of the functionality that Square POS provides under only 1 login

Incentivized

We rarely have problems, but when we do, they are major and the system becomes unusable. While Customer Support does eventually respond and fix the issue, they can take a long time. If a major problem occurs on a weekend during the dinner rush, it can be catastrophic to sales and customer returns.

Incentivized

Customer service representatives were unable to explain why customer in Australia were unable to make payments using our link. It turned out that customers in Australia must create an account. PayPal's user interface did not reveal this to our customers in Australia. There was plenty about this issue appearing in online forums and PayPal customer service couldn't explain this. This change in PayPal's usability happened between April and May of 2021 and was done without notice to vendors (like us).

Incentivized

An admission - I have NEVER had to use Square POS support. The system is seamless, it just works! I have never had any queries about how the system worked as everything is so clearly laid out. I have never had any problems with payments. If their support systems are anywhere near as good as their software, I think we'll be in good hands.

Incentivized

None are available on the list. Clover competes with HotSauce, Paradise, Poynt, and many more POS systems. We easily sell Clover more than anything else and everyone loves it. It's easily one of the best products I've seen since I have been in integrations. The sales managers love it, our sales reps love it, and most importantly our merchants love it.

Incentivized

I don't think there's really any competition here. There's Venmo (also owned by PayPal) who is now offering business accounts, but it still isn't quite the same. The closest thing in terms of ease of use would be Apple Pay or Google Pay (and there are a handful of others out there, but we offer Apple and Google Pay). As a business, I prefer Apple or Google Pay to PayPal Payments, but we offer either Google or Apple Pay, PayPal, and credit card options and PayPal is always right up there with credit cards. I don't foresee us ever getting rid of PayPal Payments as an option, but we do try to only offer it on request for higher ticket items or high dollar installment purchases.

Incentivized

We only used Square POS while we were getting set up with Authorize.Net. It isn't as flashy or recognized by the general public, but in our industry, that isn't a priority. We do very large transactions so the higher rates and fees from Square add up insanely quickly making the lower rates and fees from Authorize.Net the nail in Square's coffin for us.

Incentivized

• Definitely makes us look more professional, and we are able to handle products much smoother and faster
• The reporting allows us to see what is really selling and how much money we have actually made, which is also great, especially when you are selling things you have made or grown because you may not always have an inventory, but you can tell how much you've sold.
• We can't pause the fees for the "off-season," so it definitely is wasted money during those times.

Incentivized

• Our daily revenue has been increased when started PayPal Payments as the payment gateway.
• Refund rate and recurring revenue is stable and disputes are handled properly.
• Forex Fluctuations is controlled and solved the buying experience for few users.
• Solved problem for different currencies and retained our users.

Incentivized

• The opportunity cost of waiting for payments and manually bringing them to a bank means that we don't have to visit our bank branch. That alone saves us several hours each month.
• We can use ordinary computers and mobile devices with Square instead of paying for expensive software or terminals.
• Our clients appreciate not having to process payments to us, and anything that helps our clients and makes them happy carries more import than I can explain in this space.

Incentivized