What is Square?
Square, part of Block, Inc., provides point-of-sale hardware and software, online and in-person payment processing, invoicing, payroll, and business banking tools aimed at small and midsize merchants. Sign-up is free; Square's core revenue comes from per-transaction processing fees, with optional paid subscriptions for payroll, marketing and advanced POS features (e.g. Square Plus).
Read the full overview
Sources checked 27 September 2026: official website, pricing, developer documentation, GitHub.
Key capabilities
- Payments: Card readers, POS software and online checkout with per-transaction pricing.
- Back office: Invoicing, payroll, and a business bank account/debit card.
- Developer API: Payments, orders, catalog and team APIs for custom integrations.
Compare Square's transaction-fee percentage against your actual payment volume and card mix, and confirm which back-office features (payroll, payroll tax filing, advanced POS) require a paid subscription versus the free base account.
Shortlist Square when a business needs in-person and online payment acceptance bundled with basic back-office tools (invoicing, payroll, banking) under one free-to-start account, rather than stitching together separate point solutions.
Square's free-to-start model hides real cost in transaction fees and paid add-ons; model your actual monthly volume and required features before comparing it against a flat-fee competitor.
Technical details
- Access
- See vendor
- Source model
- Other license
- Founded
- 2009
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, USA
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- Starting price
- 0 USD · verify current price ↗
- API
- Available
- Website
- squareup.com ↗
Official resources
What to verify for your environment
Start from the users, systems and operating responsibilities the tool needs to support.
- Confirm current features, licensing and support terms with the publisher.
- Validate deployment, data location, access control, backup and recovery requirements.
- Test integrations, export paths and a representative operational workflow before committing.
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