What is Square?
Square is a point-of-sale and payments platform from Block, Inc. for small and midsize merchants. Its site describes one platform for selling in person and online, with the same account covering payroll and shift scheduling, marketing and loyalty programs, business banking with quicker access to loans, and hundreds of partner apps.
Pricing starts at $0. On the entry plan you only pay when you take a payment, so the main cost is the per-transaction processing fee. Paid plans add advanced POS features for food and beverage, retail, appointments and invoicing, and SMS marketing is billed per text after the first 500. Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android takes contactless cards and digital wallets with no extra hardware. Businesses that process more than $250,000 a year can ask Square about custom pricing and processing fees.
For developers, Square publishes payments, orders, catalog and team APIs with public documentation, so the platform can be extended or connected to custom systems.
Key capabilities
- Point of sale Sell in person and online from one platform.
- Mobile payments Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android, no extra hardware.
- Staff tools Payroll and shift scheduling.
- Marketing Email campaigns and text messages, with the first 500 texts free.
- Banking Access to funds, savings and loans.
- Integrations Hundreds of partner apps plus developer APIs.
Where Square fits
- In-person and online payment acceptance
- Point-of-sale software for food and beverage, retail and appointment businesses
- Payroll and shift scheduling
- Marketing and loyalty programs
- Business banking and loans
- Developer APIs for payments, orders and catalog
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AirwallexAirwallex offers business multi-currency accounts, international transfers, corporate cards, payment acceptance and invoicing, plus platform APIs.
Checkout.comCheckout.com provides payment APIs and hosted components for building merchant checkout flows.