Square, For the Individual or Small Business.
September 09, 2016
Square, For the Individual or Small Business.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Square Customer Engagement
For my independant contractor work in IT Support, and Consultation I am the only employee, and thus I am the only one using the Square system, and this is exactly why it is perfect for me. My work is at times few and far between since I have a full time job as well, so there are times I use my Square frequently, and other times not at all or very little for a while. There are no monthly charges, which again is perfect due to the low utilization at times, and the hardware is free or reasonably priced depending on what you need. It allows me to take a payment from nearly anyone as checks can be a risky thing at times in this day and age, and guarantees payment.
- No monthly fees
- Reasonable per transaction fee
- Good priced equipment/addons
- Chip and NFC readers available
- Some of the build quality on the peripherals could feel a bit better.
- Have more options for businesses with more credit card transactions such as monthly or discounted per transaction once a certain number is reached.
- Have functionality to allow for a typed card number without the higher fee if the software verifies there is a hardware/read error with the card.
- This has allowed me to accept credit / debit transactions without having to have a monthly subscription to a service and lose money on times of no to little use, allowing me to have a broader customer range as checks are risky.
- All of my initial equipment was free and there were no startup costs so my return was immediate.
- The small fee taken out of the transaction is very much worth the ability to accept nearly all plastic transactions.
The only other service similar to Square I have any interaction with is PayPal here, it works in a very similar manner, and at the time had the same exact fee schedule. It has the added perk of going directly into your PayPal account if this is a service you use a lot of for your business. It (at the time) did not have any additional readers or peripherals such as NFC or Chip readers, but that may have changed now. Over all I'd say they are pretty close to each other performance wise, but Square has a bigger user base for the card reader specifically.