Square Fees & Pricing: The Ultimate Guide

Square is a payments, point-of-sale (POS), and business management tool for small businesses. You can use its POS app for free, and Square charges a flat-rate payment processing fee. Additional features such as marketing and payroll are available for a monthly fee. Square fees vary, depending on the solution your business needs. However, there are essentially three types of costs you may pay to use Square: payment processing fees, software fees, and hardware costs.

How Square Pricing Works

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) company has no contracts, minimum requirements, or upfront payments for any of its software or payment processing tools. The basic software is free, and any upgrades are billed monthly and on a month-to-month basis. Square deducts a flat fee on payments processed for each transaction. Hardware is low-cost, and interest-free installment plans are available for qualified purchases. Visit Square to create your free account.

Visit Square

Square Pricing & Fees at a Glance

*Lower pricing available with paid plans.

In addition to POS software and payment processing, Square offers add-on services like marketing and payroll that come with monthly fees. Square also has several card reader and POS terminals you can purchase, some of which come with discounted payment processing fees.

Square Payment Processing Fees

• In-person and mobile card payments: 2.6% + 10 cents per transaction
• Online payments: 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction
• Keyed-in and invoice payments: 3.5% plus 15 cents per transaction

*Square offers a lower processing rate for businesses that purchase Square Register or Square Terminal hardware, or Square Retail or Square Restaurant software.

Overall, Square offers some of the best merchant services for new and small businesses. Whatever payment methods you use for your business—in-store, online, or virtual terminal—you’ll get the same core features and services:

• No monthly fee to accept and process credit cards
• All payments and sales are tracked together in your Square dashboard
• Accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express, plus contactless payments
• Same rate for all cards and card types: debit, credit, prepaid, rewards, and corporate
• Deposits made within one to two business days
• Instant deposit available for an additional fee of 1%
• Chargeback protection free for sellers and covers disputes up to $250 per month
• Custom pricing for sellers with annual revenue over $250,000 and average ticket size over $15

Square POS Fees

Square offers a free POS system with every free Square Payments account. When you sign up with Square, you’ll instantly have access to inventory, order, sales, and customer management tools through the free POS. However, Square also offers specific POS software for retail, restaurant, and appointment-based businesses.

Square for Retail

Square for Retail is a POS system designed specifically for retail businesses of all sizes such as boutiques and gift shops. It has advanced inventory, online sales, check out tools, and reporting.

Square for Retail includes advanced reporting and inventory management tools for omnichannel selling.

Square for Retail Pricing Plans

Square for Retail offers a free option, a Plus tier that contains all of the advanced retail functions, and a Premium plan that provides access to Square’s other business tools like Marketing and Payroll. All plans provide unlimited products, transactions, employee logins, and a free online store.

Square for Restaurants

Square for Restaurants is POS software specifically designed for quick-service, full-service, fast-casual, bar, and multiconcept restaurants.

Square for Restaurants allows businesses to centrally manage online and in-person orders.

Square for Restaurants Pricing Plans

All plans include fast order-entry with conversational modifiers, menu and order management, table management, open checks, auto-gratuity options, multilocation management, and remote device management.

Plus has 24/7 support and more sophisticated restaurant features like auto-86ing, coursing, and options to set closing procedures. The Plus and Premium plans have the same features, but Premium comes with discounts on Square Payroll, Marketing, Loyalty, and Online Store. All paid Square for Restaurant plans have a free 30-day trial.

Square Appointments

Square Appointments is designed for service-based businesses like spas, salons, hairdressers, personal trainers, massage therapists, makeup artists, appointment-based retail, professional services like consulting or photography, and more.

Square Appointments makes it easy to manage multiple appointment calendars from anywhere.

Square Appointments Pricing Plans

Unlike Square’s other POS systems, Appointments is priced based on the number of employees you have. The features are exactly the same in every plan.

*Custom pricing available if you have more than 10 employees.

Square Online Pricing

Every free Square account comes with basic POS software, payment processing, invoicing, and a Square Online store. The online store ties into the rest of the Square ecosystem and can be managed through your Square Dashboard where you can sync products, orders, and customers across your in-person and online sales channels.

Square Online Store is a free drag-and-drop web builder for selling goods, services, and food online.

You can upgrade to a paid online store for a custom domain and to remove Square branding and receive discounts on integrated shipping labels and real-time shipping calculations. Paid plans also come with advanced features like customer product reviews, abandoned cart recovery, and the ability to accept PayPal payments.

Square Online Pricing Plans

*Lump-sum billing

Square’s Fees for Add-On Software and Other Services

Square’s core products are POS, payments, and ecommerce, though the company offers a variety of other supplemental products including invoicing, payroll, and marketing that you can use alongside other solutions or individually.

Square Invoicing

Square Invoicing can be a good fit for client service businesses like consulting firms, field service businesses like contractors, made-to-order retailers, and freelance professionals that want to easily request payment from customers.

Square Invoices are free to create and send.

Square Payroll

Square Payroll is subscription-based, full-service payroll software that automatically calculates payments and taxes. This service can be used independently or in tandem with Square’s other products like POS or Team Management.

Square Payroll Pricing

Square Team Management

Square Team Management is included with every free Square account. Some paid POS plans include Team Plus features, although they can also be purchased separately. Advanced features include setting wage rates, timecard notes, multiple permission levels, and detailed labor reports. Team Plus has a 30-day free trial.

View all planned shifts by week to assign a job or an employee. A shift can be viewed weekly or daily to make changes.
(Source: Square)

Square Team Management Pricing

Square Marketing

Square Marketing allows businesses to create, send, and track email and social campaigns. Every plan includes automation features, customer coupon options, automatic email collection, and unlimited email sends. Plus, Square Marketing Assistant is an automated chat that sends you suggestions, opportunities, and reports to stay on top of campaigns. It also uses your email lists to suggest campaigns that you can launch from your phone.

Text Message Marketing is a way to engage customers in a more personal way. (Source: Square)

The features are identical for every Square Marketing plan, with prices ranging from $15 to $35+ per month based on the number of customer contacts you have.

Square Marketing Pricing

Square Loyalty

Square Loyalty is a mobile-app based digital rewards program that provides customers with points based on their activity. Square Loyalty integrates seamlessly with Square POS and Square Online Store. It tracks customers based on their payment and/or method once they enroll. Businesses can customize whether shoppers are rewarded per visit or per dollar spent. To apply rewards, just enter the customer’s phone number at online or in-store checkout.

View returning customers’ points and reward history in a quick glance.
(Source: Square)

Like Square Marketing, Loyalty pricing is based on the number of times a customer enrolls or completes a transaction where loyalty points are earned or redeemed. The features are identical for each plan.

Square Loyalty Pricing

Square Capital

Square Capital is a service that offers business loans to qualifying existing Square customers. The loan amounts can range from $500 to $250,000. Square uses data like your payment processing history and account history to determine your eligibility. Square automatically deducts a fixed percentage of your daily sales to repay the loan over time, or you can prepay the loan amount. The entire loan amount must be repaid in 18 months from acceptance date.

Square Hardware Fees

Mobile payments and in-store sales require credit card readers to accept payments. Square has a variety of readers that let you swipe, insert, or tap cards to process payments. Each of these works on smartphones or tablets using Square’s free POS app.

Square Mobile Payment Readers

• Square Reader for magstripe: First reader free, $10 for additional
• Square Reader for contactless and chip: $49, dock and additional $29

Square In-Store Payment Readers

• Square Reader for contactless and chip: $49, dock and additional $29
• Stand for contactless and chip: $169 (compatible with 10.2″ iPad 2019, 10.5″ iPad Air 2019, and iPad Pro 10.5″, sold separately).

Square Reader can be secured to a smartphone for mobile payments or docked on a countertop for in-store sales.

Square Full Register Systems

• Square Terminal: $299
• Square Register: $799

Square Terminal has built-in swipe, chip, and contactless payments plus receipt printing.

Square Hardware Financing

Square offers no-interest financing for qualified hardware purchases between $49 and $10,000. Qualifying orders can be split into an installment payment plan with up to 24 monthly payments. Applications and payments for hardware financing are directly through Square, not a third-party.

Bottom line

Square is best known for its square-shaped mobile card reader and payment processing service. However, Square has grown into a platform that supports your entire business, including payment processing, business management, online selling, marketing, and much more.

Square’s strongest advantage is that you can easily craft a full sales and business management solution on any budget. Core features are free, and you only pay the Square fees for credit card processing, certain processing equipment, and optional advanced features. So with Square, you only pay for what you actually need. Visit Square to sign up for a free account.

Visit Square

You May Also Like …

• Learn about credit card processing fees and why they are unavoidable
• Read about merchant accounts and what features to expect
• Read more about Square, the different products, and what’s best for your business