Square is a great piece of technology that enables companies to become more mobile as well as making ecommerce more efficient. Square is about “making commerce easy”. Entrepreneurs can take advantage of this technology for no upfront costs, it is free to sign up and the company will even send a free square mobile reader. However, there is a fee on every purchase made through the square app. If a card is swiped through the Square reader, the business will be charged 2.75%, and if a card number is manually entered the business will be charged 3.5% plus a small 15 cent fee. This sounds expensive, but there are no monthly fees or contracts so the Square app doesn’t have to be used for all sales. The money from each transaction will be transferred to your account in up to 2 business days.
When I first heard of Square I was reminded of their commercial a while back where the yoga instructor was accepting payments in the park through their mobile phone. I thought it was simply a small device you plug into your phone that gave you the ability to accept credit card payments without having to have a big machine or cash register, so basically, accepting payments on the go. This however, isn’t the case. To use the square device, you must download the Square app. This app not only allows the user to accept credit card payments, but it offers many other utilities that are very useful for organization and day to day operations of the business. The app includes the ability to view sales spreadsheets to see what days are the busiest and too also see which item/service is the best seller. The mobile app is compatible with both ios and android softwares so it is available for almost every smart phone user. As Square is installed onto one’s device, it allows the account to hook up with receipt machines, registers, and even barcode scanners. Making all of these functions compatible with one another allows the business owner to be more organized and efficient, freeing up more time for the owner to use on other aspects of the business such as expansion. At a glance, Square is just a basic device that makes payment simpler and more mobile, but after looking further into its capabilities, Square proved to be a very valuable program for young and old businesses alike.
This seems like a really good tool for service businesses like lawn mowing and landscaping so you don’t have to be carrying hundreds of dollars of cash and checks around in your truck all the time and stopping at the bank everyday. You can just have the customer swipe their card and you get the money in your account in a couple days. Keeping track of payments would be easier as well.
I’ve encountered Square in a lot of places throughout my life and I say, it is a fantastic way to streamline payments on the go. I had no idea, though, about the multitude of other features it included with the app! This would be a great way to help jump-start a new business or even rejuvenate an old business.
It’s really interesting and cool how they (and many other services like them) take the information that goes through them, and put it in a format to help you make business decisions. It saves you time as an entrepreneur gathering information and allows you to skip to decision-making then action. I very much dig the square.
I could see this device being very handy for entrepreneurs including myself who do face to face transactions with customers. I meet people locally to buy and sell shoes and having this device would allow my transactions to be much more simple and also more safe since I wouldnt have to carry around cash all the time but instead could use a credit card. I will for sure be looking into getting one of these and would recommend it to others as well.
This is a pretty incredible piece of technology. This tool is very helpful in how it can make a business really portable. Being able to take credit card payments anytime, anywhere can really help a business thrive in an age where the market has made everything more easily to obtain. I like how it gives more power to small businesses without making them pay a monthly fee. I really do like this product and I will probably be using it someday.
Working over a year in a small shop just getting started, I am very accustomed to using Square and resources it has to offer. It was a huge help with seemingly limitless abilities to aid a small business in their starting days and even for the time after that. Not only did it save us from the inconvenience of purchasing a credit card scanner, but it went above and beyond. The majority of what we used this product for, besides the actual square, was its tracking capabilities. It allowed us to see what times on what days the most purchases were made as well as printing out daily reports. This is a product that should really be considered by any company, big or small, as a way to even just simplify business.