TrustRadius Insights
Square POS has proven to be an invaluable tool for a wide range of businesses and organizations. Users rely on Square POS to handle …
Starting at $10 per each additional reader; first reader free
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What is Square POS?
Square POS is a point-of-sale software solution with features such as accept credit cards with your iPhone, Android, and iPad along with the flexibility to accept credit card payments anywhere, from Square headquartered in San Francisco, California.
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Pricing
Each Transaction
2.6% + $0.10
On Premise
per transaction
Square Reader for magstripe
$10
On Premise
per each additional reader; first reader free
Square Stand for contactless and chip
$16
On Premise
per month
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Square POS?
Square POS Video
The TrustRadius team goes over some of the best free POS software and services, which includes Square POS.
Square POS Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Square POS is a point-of-sale software solution with features such as accept credit cards with your iPhone, Android, and iPad along with the flexibility to accept credit card payments anywhere, from Square headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.6.
The most common users of Square POS are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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(90)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Square POS has proven to be an invaluable tool for a wide range of businesses and organizations. Users rely on Square POS to handle transactions on the go, whether it's at festivals, events, or remote locations. It has simplified the process of accepting payments and making sales at various venues such as cash bars, concerts, weddings, and sporting events. The reliability and convenience of Square POS have made it a preferred choice for on-site payments.
Additionally, Square POS has been utilized by digital marketing agencies for charging clients, saving card information, and authorizing monthly payments. Retail businesses find it beneficial for accepting credit card payments, tracking sales and inventory, and issuing receipts. Independent stylists and makeup artists have also found value in Square POS for appointments, invoicing, inventory management, and sales.
Organizations and departments use Square POS for events, fairs, and merchandise fees. With its intuitive customer database and marketing strategies, Square POS helps analyze store traffic, manage inventory, and improve bookkeeping and accounting tasks. Moreover, Square POS is being used for online credit card payments on e-commerce sites as well as in-person sales using the Square reader for iPhones.
Business owners from various industries appreciate the ease of processing payments, availability of data for reporting and tax accounting, and the user-friendly interface of Square POS. Whether it's selling clothing and branded merchandise or collecting dues for organizations, users have found that Square POS streamlines their transactions, manages inventory effectively, and generates comprehensive reports. Additionally, Square POS caters to therapists collecting credit card payments easily without delays while providing a secure solution for fundraising events.
Clean and Intuitive Interface: Many users have praised Square POS for its clean and intuitive interface, stating that it is easy to use and navigate. Customers appreciate the simplicity of the user interface, which is clearly laid out and familiar to anyone with experience using smartphones, computers, or tablets.
Real-Time Sales Tracking: Numerous reviewers have found Square POS's real-time updates on tickets sold and revenue made to be invaluable. This feature allows businesses to easily track their sales performance and analyze their business metrics. Users appreciate having up-to-date information at their fingertips, enabling them to make informed decisions about their operations.
Customizable Options: Several customers have expressed appreciation for the variety of customizable options offered by Square POS. They like being able to tailor the system to their specific needs and business requirements. This flexibility allows them to adapt the software to their unique business models, making it a versatile solution for different types of businesses.
Clunky hardware design: Some users have found the hardware of Square POS to be clunky, particularly the chip reader when paired with phones. This has led to difficulties in using the device effectively and may impact the overall user experience.
Limited sales reporting flexibility: The software lacks flexible categorization in sales reports, making it challenging for users to drill down into their data and gain specific insights. Users have expressed frustration with this limitation as it hinders their ability to analyze sales performance thoroughly.
Inconvenient access to sales summaries: Users have reported difficulty accessing sales summaries on the phone app and are required to download an additional app, Square Dashboard, which adds an extra step and can cause inconvenience. This issue has been mentioned by several reviewers and may disrupt the seamless workflow for some users.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 37)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 29, 2022
Easy to Use
Square POS is used when we are taking orders from someone directly, in person. It solves the problem of needing a payment system to accept credit cards and debit cards. It helps us to easily sell our items, quickly accept payment, manage what we've sold in the database, and transfer money to our accounts.
- Quickly and easily accepts the common payment type of debit or credit
- Lightweight and mobile
- Manage sales in the database
- Sometimes the piece that the card goes into has trouble, and it has to be done multiple times
- It's sometimes awkward flipping the screen you're using around to ask the customer if they'd like to tip
- The white card accepter gets dirty from so many people using it, maybe different color options
March 29, 2022
Square POS is worth the hype
We use square to sell tickets to our events on-site at the venue.
- Instills confidence from the buyer
- Easy to use
- Easy to train others to use
- Real-time updates on tickets sold and revenue made
- The swipe functionality worked more often than the chip card functionality
- It would be nice if buys could just sign-in to their Square account to purchase with pre-saved data
March 27, 2022
Best platform for processing payments!
We were looking for a good credit card processing system to use for our clients that did not have a big monthly overhead cost. Finding and using Square POS was such a blessing to our company and helps us make sure we receive all of our payments on time. Such a good investment!
- Low fees.
- Easy to use.
- Reliability.
- Less fees.
- Better communication.
- More tutorial videos.
March 25, 2022
Square POS is GREAT for the business!!
Square POS has been extremely helpful when setting up an event that requires a fee at the door, as well as when selling items for a fundraiser. It is free for our company to use and allows us to keep everything tracked in one account. It is easily accessible by tracking all individual transactions. We can use Square POS anywhere and at any time that is convenient for the customers. As I mentioned, we use Square POS for events, fundraisers, game attendees, etc. We, as a company, are able to sell items on the go and can host events at any location with the help of Square POS.
- Tracks individual transactions.
- Contactless that allows chip card reader.
- Allows you to create invoices with customer name, payment amount, due date, etc.
- Pulls sales reports.
- Allows you to add team members to the account.
- Accept card charges on the go.
- Get to know the platform.
- Pay close attention when entering the dollar amount that needs to be charged.
March 24, 2022
Perfect compact portable POS
I use Square in two businesses. In my full time job, we use the card reader that attaches to your mobile phone for selling books at our dinner seminars and other events. For my part time work I purchased a card reader that sits on my desk. I use them both for keeping track of inventory and retail sales.
- Their devices are compact and easily moved from one place to another.
- It is simple to use. The learning curve is small.
- It is perfect for a small business as their is no up front cost with the free chip card reader.
- You can enter all of your inventory into the app on your phone. Also accessible on a desktop.
- When we first used it we had some issues with the phone attached card reader not reading the cards so we had to manually input the card numbers.
- We had some technical difficulties with connection in the beginning with the phone attached reader but we only had that issue the one time.
- Phone support at the time the above happened was not available.
March 24, 2022
POS Solutions for Accepting and Recording Payments
Square POS is a very useful software for any organization/department that requires to record and accept payments for purposes like events/fairs/merchandise/fee, etc. Square POS works on devices like computers, and mobile phones through the Square POS application. It is a great tool for accepting payments as well as maintaining records. The use of this product is not only specifically meant for selling products, but it can be also used for other cases were payment needs to be recorded properly.
- Recording the transactions with sync for each device.
- Accepting payments through credit and debit cards.
- Easy to use.
- Square Hardware like Credit Card Reader or POS Hardware is not available in India.
March 24, 2022
Square POS is great for on the go payments!
Square allows me to accept payments on the go. I love the little swipe unit that plugs into my phone to take debit/credit cards as well. I love the ease of use and the square POS unit allows me to swipe the customer's card instead of manually entering their information.
- On the go payments
- Auto card info entered
- Small service fee
- Smaller service fee
March 23, 2022
Great for any small business.
I use square POS to make transactions with my clients. Square has made it easier to receive payments from my clients with minimum fees.
- Ease of use.
- Works with multiple providers.
- Low fees.
- We should be able to scan cards instead of typing them in.
- A better UX.
Square POS is used for all of our on-site payments for cash bars, concerts, festivals, weddings, sporting events, etc. It is the sole POS system that we've used in the 14 years that we've been in business. Sometimes we use just one Square POS System, while other times, we use 200. We own 40 of them and rent the others as needed.
- Accommodate Small Businesses and their POS needs
- Allows payment processing in the middle of the field, with no power, with no internet - simply accommodating.
- There are thousands of use cases, so there could be more added to where little customizations here and there can be addressed.
March 21, 2022
Do Your Homework: Lower rates and fees are out there, but this may still be a good fit for your business.
We used Square POS for a short time while we were setting up a different system. It was a good fit as a short-term solution for us due to its ease of use and quick start-up. It was used both for card-present transactions as well as over-the-phone payments.
- Easy to use, by anyone.
- Flexible in card-present and over-the-phone payments.
- Appealing receipt options.
- The rates are far too high and simply not acceptable long-term for our business.
November 24, 2021
Meets our Current Needs
We use Square POS to accept payments from customers that wish to use a credit card to pay for our services. It allows us to accept payments on-site after we complete a job. Without it, we wouldn’t be accepting any [...] credit cards and that would [be] limiting for customers.
- Allows me to collect at a customers home
- Connects to my phone so we don’t have to buy a lot of equipment
- Money gets deposited fairly quickly
- Ability to see the receipt the customer will get before completing the sale
- It would be nice if tax info is pre loaded by Square tied to location so as you move it changes
Square POS was an easy decision with no monthly fees and the ability to capture more customers asking for moving services without explicitly providing one in-store.
- No monthly fees.
- Accepted most cards.
- Ease of use.
- Brighter screen.
We use Square POS as our primary point-of-sale software and hardware package at our retail location and for mobile applications such as vending and catering events. In addition, we use Square to send invoices for pre-paid services (catering & events), and over the course of the COVID pandemic in 2020 have rapidly implemented Square's online ordering options.
We appreciate Square's flexibility and ease of use - both for customers and our employees. Square's user interface is reasonably easy to understand and operate, with relatively few glitches. Our customers appreciate that Square is a "known quantity" and are familiar with Square due to its popularity in the marketplace (many of fellow businesses, locally, also utilize Square).
Our only constructive criticism of Square is that implementing the online ordering package was initially somewhat cumbersome and clunky, and early on (in mid-2020) Square implemented many changes that caused us to have to re-do several things. However, over the past several months everything Square-related (including the online ordering site/package) has been stable and Square is regularly making updates to the end user experience to make changes and updates easier to do and process.
We appreciate Square's flexibility and ease of use - both for customers and our employees. Square's user interface is reasonably easy to understand and operate, with relatively few glitches. Our customers appreciate that Square is a "known quantity" and are familiar with Square due to its popularity in the marketplace (many of fellow businesses, locally, also utilize Square).
Our only constructive criticism of Square is that implementing the online ordering package was initially somewhat cumbersome and clunky, and early on (in mid-2020) Square implemented many changes that caused us to have to re-do several things. However, over the past several months everything Square-related (including the online ordering site/package) has been stable and Square is regularly making updates to the end user experience to make changes and updates easier to do and process.
- Hardware options (iPad, native hardware, etc.)
- Mobility
- Ease of use for employees
- Customer interface
- Printer options and connectivity
- Ability to create multiple user accounts with selected privileges
- More notice for updates and changes that impact end users
September 22, 2020
A great POS system for small to medium businesses that simple to use
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Square POS at our company for taking deposits in person, which makes the process super simple. The mobile terminal allows me to take it with me to a client meeting if needed and be able to take a deposit on the spot. This saves us time when it comes to trying to collect payments remotely.
- Very simple to use
- Allows a variety of payment options
- Offers great reporting
- More options for freelancers
- A more hands on onboarding experience
- Better rates
September 22, 2020
Square Great Product!
We use Square POS in our organization to take credit cards online from our online e-commerce site. This has made taking credit card payments very easy. Also we use the Square reader for the iPhone when we have in person sales. It is a great time saver.
- Tracks payments well.
- Pays in a timely fashion.
- Can always check payment online.
- You can create an item list when using it for direct sales and set default prices for items.
- I don't have any negatives with Square.
September 18, 2020
Square POS: Easy to use anywhere, anytime!
Square POS was used by our church youth group for the Baja Ten Days Missions. We use Square POS to make it easier for us to raise monies for our youth mission trips during our Baja Marketplace and throughout the year. It addresses the issue that many people don't carry cash and/or checks with them anymore. We are in a 'plastic' society where most people utilize credit/debit cards to pay for many of their daily items, charity included. The Square POS system allowed us to accept credit/debit transactions with very little taken out for the use of their services.
- Ease of use for customer
- Ease of use for the business
- Low cost of use for the business
- Free Square POS unit
- Separating charges was complicated at first, so it's not entirely user-friendly until you become familiar with the system.
- The card reader didn't always function properly and we had to manually put the customer information into the system, but it worked most of the time.
- Easier to navigate
January 29, 2020
Works Fine, But Not The Best Fit
I am a coach with an appointment-based business and I have the Square POS system as a payment option for my clients. It is a perfectly adequate system and I have never had any problems with it. It is an easy-to-use option to use for in-person credit card payments, both for my clients and for me.
- Easy to use on the spot for an instant transfer.
- Square Reader is just one piece of hardware to use.
- I have several customers that don’t trust the Square POS system.
- Doesn’t integrate with the Acuity Scheduling software I use.
November 20, 2019
A very versatile business payment solution
As a service business where our service takes place at a clients location, it is important for us to be able to collect payment from customers quickly and easily. We use Square POS to accept credit card payments from our customers on site. This helps us to avoid having unpaid invoices.
- The fee structure is very easy to understand and is fair.
- Swiped transactions and keyed transactions are equally easy.
- There are many employee management features inside of the app.
- None
October 15, 2019
Payments right from your phone
Square is used across our organization. It is the way we collect payments from clients using credit cards. This allows both therapists and office staff to collect credit card payments easily. This eliminates the wait for a secretary to do the processing and helps to not miss payments when office staff is not available.
- It can easily work from any smartphone or tablet.
- It allows us to use chips, swipe or manually enter the card number.
- It allows set up for recurring payments.
- The recurring payments are tricky to do and storing credit card numbers was easier in the past.
- The card reader does not always connect to the phone creating a delay in payment and sometimes needing to manually enter the number.
October 03, 2019
Square POS a thoroughly recommended POS system
Up until my bricks & mortar shop closed a couple of months ago, Square POS was our only till system. We used it to ring up customer orders in person and by phone and we loved that stock control was fully integrated with our website. Very easy to obtain reports and effect all manner of customer transactions from refunds to collecting email addresses for marketing to gathering information for the taxman. Superb system.
- Very intuitive system - easy to use, clearly laid out
- Excellent reporting capabilities
- Fast payments
- Reasonable fees
- The cost of the hardware (specific scanners and receipt printers) was prohibitive for my company, and whilst we managed without them, they would have been nice to have. The range of scanners and printers that integrate with Square is small, so despite our devices' capabilities to read barcodes (we used ipads) and the Zebra receipt/label printers we had, we couldn't use either as the system wouldn't integrate with them.
- Whilst Square's credit card reader is nifty in design, it's a bit small and lacking substance to have as a customer-facing reader so it really needs the dock the company offers. The dock is awkward to open to reset or pair the reader. We often found pairing the reader with the device running the system tricky and confusing, relying on pressing one button and then interpreting a sequence of lights that often caused confusion. The pairing process might have been clearer presented through the device rather than the reader.
- Truly can't think of any more!
Square POS is used by our organization for any and all events that we host to raise money for our company's foundation. As a large construction company, we don't use POS to receive payments for our large clients on construction projects because we are talking about $1,000,000 invoices, as such we don't have an easy way to accept payments for smaller amounts such registrations and sponsorships of events like golf tournaments, etc. We put these events on often for our foundation, and we were constantly being asked by our attendees how they could pay using credit cards. We ultimately implemented Square POS because it is easy, cheap to implement and get started, and the fees are comparable to more complex systems that wouldn't make sense for us.
- Easy tracking of payment receipts for the user.
- Easy sending receipts for payors.
- Easy use, particularly with the chip reader.
- Very quick processing time, regardless of connection speed we have had great results.
- Easy to set up quick shortcut options as well as create custom transactions.
- Their old swipe option was very difficult, it rarely correctly reads cards and requires manual input of numbers, chip reader addresses this problem.
- If you don't input customer information, it can be difficult to quickly look at records and know which transaction was for what or whom.
January 04, 2019
Great System
We use Square POS for our ticket sales at the ticket window for our annual corn maze. This allows us to take payments using wifi as opposed to a dedicated credit card phone line and save money. We are able to take payments using swipe, chip, tap and apple/android pay which really helps us stay up-to-date with the times.
- taking several different methods of credit card payments ie. swipe, tap, chip, and apple/android pay
- Itemized pos system allows us to use a tablet for all our register needs. We do not use the print or cash box functions, but we use it for credit card payments strictly. We hope to eventually switch over completely to Square POS
- Easy to use and great customer support
- If you want to do more than just take credit cards there is a plethora of equipment to choose from. It can get pretty expensive to set up though when purchasing equipment.
- You are only as fast as your internet/cell service signal which can slow things down a bit. They do have an offline mode, but that can be risky because you don't really know if the card went through until you get back to service.
November 12, 2018
Square POS - A Must Have For Small Business!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I am an independent Hairstylist & Makeup Artist. I use Square for all of my business needs - appointments, contacts, inventory, invoicing, sales, etc. It provides dynamic reporting & is easily accessible from anywhere, so I can take care of business whether I am in the salon, at home, or on the road.
- It keeps track of my earnings & expenses & offers me a variety of ways to view & track the data.
- Provides an easily customizable scheduling interface, which allows me the ability to update my hours from day to day or week to week, see scheduled appointments, & accept or reject potential appointments.
- Provides both text & email appointment confirmation/reminders to my clients, automatically, saving me time.
- I think the menu (both on the app & the online version) is a little disorganized & could stand to be improved/streamlined.
- Would like to see the ability to add more customization to the scheduling website (ie: ability to customize text, insert breaks/paragraphs in service descriptions, etc.)
- Ability to quickly add custom line items to a client's visit when checking out, rather than needing to choose from a pre-set list. Occasionally I need to add on a service or retail item that has not yet been entered into the list. Currently, I am unable to simply add this within the transaction. Instead, I have to go out of the transaction & into my retail or service list, create a new item (adding description, etc.,) save it, then return to the transaction to add it to the ticket.
April 12, 2018
Quick & Easy: Square POS
We use it for concession and merchandise sales. It's very user-friendly and easy to train staff and volunteers on. It's replaced our old clunky manual register system which gives us more counter space to display items for sale as well as eliminates a lot of user error when it comes to entering items. This has also been helpful in providing a more accurate count of inventory.
- Cash transactions
- E-receipts
- Quick sales
- Slow transactions: This could be a wifi issue, but sometimes the program freezes.
March 22, 2018
Square POS for My Small Business
I am the sole owner of a small business (photography) and I use Square POS for most transactions. It gives me the ability to accept credit card payments from clients while on the go, which is essential to me because my business always operates on location. When customers choose to pay with cash, I can still record the payment and send them a receipt via Square.
- The Square POS software is free to download (the physical card reader was also sent for free). I was happy to sign up for a POS system without having to pay a monthly fee.
- The interface of Square is minimalistic and easy to navigate. Even those who are not very tech savvy will be able to use it with little effort.
- Square POS automatically sends payments to my bank account without my needing to log in and transfer funds. Other bank-to-bank apps I've used don't initiate that transfer automatically.
- I have not been able to find a way to directly contact support for Square POS. It would be good to have some sort of system of support for customers.
- When using the Square app on my phone, I'm not able to access all its features - I need to go online from a computer for this. It would be nice to have more control on my phone.
- If the card reader is unable to read a card, I have to pay a higher fee to enter the card number manually.