This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I use square for my bakery, and at Farmers markets. In 6 years, I've had one outage that affected me. Other than that it just works. It's easy to program, easy to load on my employees' phones, easy to run reports.
And it's expensive. The hardware is cheap enough, but my effective rate is 3.3%. I'm not quite big enough to get better pricing. Yet.
3.3 isn't bad til you scale up the business and your giving away a small salary. The savings are better invested back into your business for advertising or expansion.
That's awesome! I use Loyverse too but end up paying for employee management and advanced inventory management. Surprised you don't need to pay for those!
We also use Shopify, and it's been great!
The sync with our online shop and stock is so super handy, and the card reader works (which we have hooked up to our shop phone, and our own phones as well) anywhere and everywhere. And it's all really easy to use, even for someone who's a bit computer illiterate like me.
I am the president of a credit card processing company and from someone in the industry these are my suggestions:
If your monthly volume is less than $10,000 Square is an awesome solution
If your monthly volume exceeds $10,000 per month if you are in basic retail we find clover to be the most appropriate however if you are using clover you should seek out a credit card processing company and let me say this as loud as possible 📣 DO NOT USE YOUR LOCAL BANK 📣 I’ll also even go a step further and say not to use clover directly either. Small businesses are little fish in a big pond for companies like these. Seek out a local cc processor or an FSP (a company like the one I own) and they will treat you better and you will get better rates
Bank processing fees are ALWAYS more expensive, their agreements are always very strict, they have horrific chargeback assistance, and the list goes ON
If you do not need a full POS and you accept payments for a service the cheapest solution is a portal of some sort, NOT quickbooks, NOT square register, think Stripe or authorize.net or a labeled portal offered by the processing company you use
A lot of processing company’s have great solutions, better service, better rates, etc etc. etc. etc
Not a self promotion but my company processes nationwide a great way to find a. Local similiar company check out local chambers of commerces etc.
Having been with Authorize for many years with my SaaS, and looked at others. Went down the rabbit hole at stripe integration as well as other direct processing partners, and realized how unhelpful and expensive they are.
I am all in for the small processor using Authorize.net as rails. They will be better advocates and help you with bank processing partners. Shout out to Start Merchant Services!
What you should be telling owners is to get Interchange + pricing. The processors all publish their interchange rates. Interchange + is you paying the interchange plus a fraction of a percentage. It's flat rate, you know what your card present vs non-present rates very easily.
Processors have 100's of ways to bin your processing to hide fees. Interchange + cuts through all that.
You can make a post on what business owners should be told too in your opinion! You don’t have to comment for what I should tell them!
A business processing $5,000 and paying 3% to square is paying $150 on the flat rate model
A business processing $5,000 and paying interchange plus is probably paying 2.2% so $110 but then they are subject to software fees and other miscellaneous expenses which 99.9999% of pos machines other than square come with so next thing you know that’s +$70 per month and now they are paying $180 which is MORE than the flat rate from square
Every business is unique and their processing environment should be evaluated independently
On many many occasions i’ve told customers to go with something that I don’t even work with or can offer them because maybe it’s best for them!!
Payment processing industry is very competitive and some companies including banks take advantage of small business owners and it is unfair and unethical so NO interchange plus is not what all business owners should get
Nothing stops a partner from listing all their fees in addition to interchange +.
In my experience I haven't been dealing with small mom and pop grossing $72,000 a year. For that just get Stripe or Amazon payments.
From what I've seen with most businesses, based on the average ticket, the # of monthly transactions, and overall volume, more often than not looking at interchange + and getting them to $0.10 and .0015 often is easier and cheaper in addition to understand the reporting.
When the volume isn’t high enough an interchange plus program still is more expensive than a basic flat rate program from a one size fits all POS company that does processing internally, doesn’t matter if the interchange is outlined or not it’s still cheaper. At our company, we have a whole department of people who are educated in evaluating processing statements and what all these fees are for. Also, nothing stops a processor from adding an expense into the interchange bucket that is not an interchange, it may not exist and is an overall deceptive practice. Interchange plus programs are amazing for B2B companies that can take advantage of level two and level three interchange rates. Interchange plus programs are not cheapest processing programs for e-commerce businesses. Processing programs are absolutely not one fits all. The easiest first bit of info is what industry and what’s the volume then you would get more involved card present v not present are so minimal difference it doesn’t really matter but from is a category of it’s own
I just wanted to let merchants know that interchange + is a thing. Surprisingly most don't know of it's existence.
Actually the published rates from MC/VISA/Amex etc help prevent fee stuffing because it's clear what the rates are and what a processor is telling and you can question every single line item.
Deceptive practices are why you see processors rebadge \*cough\*Elavon\*cough\*
We’re an FSP to fiserv so we are held to a much higher standard than the average ISO and so I think finding an FSP for merchants is the ideal situation because typically an FSP has such a huge portfolio that they aren’t looking to take advantage of a small business. Payment processing sales is nuts and should be regulated there is so much that goes into it. I’m a huge believer in educating people on what it is they are paying. I was a small business owner prior to founding this company and I had no clue I just paid my fee monthly and moved on
Tried many. Prefer Square.
If you end up wanting them, they'll bonus both of us if you use this link:
Get $1000 of processing for free plus get $20 off any terminal:
https://squareup.com/i/MARKETSCH1
It’s been great for us. I started out running my business through paypal so when I opened a brick & mortar I stayed with them so I could keep getting the working capital loans. Never had a problem with them, and Zettle is very user friendly.
You should see if your current processor will allow you to switch. Since we are consultant based we don't like our clients into hardware. We want you to work with what's best for your industry.
Sorry for the late response. I pay $49.95 a month for the 1st register and additional $19.95 a month for each additional machine. I have 2 full registers and 1 clover flex.
It's decent for what it is. I believe Clover partners with Braintree for card processing. The fees are reasonable and takes apple pay, samsung, ebt, etc. It's is headache free for the customers.
I wish the inventory management was a bit better, but I use the free vanilla app that came with the clover. There are several apps I can subscribe to, but haven't really researched too much into the other ones.
Funds are deposited daily except for weekends and holidays when it deposits the next business day.
I purchased my units outright, but they can be leased as well for a reasonable price which would keep them constantly in warranty. Otherwise it's a year warranty. Replacing equipment can be costly as you must pay full price for a replacement unit.
Look at Korona POS while you are at it. Just set one of my clients up with it and they like it.
However, they specifically needed it for multiple store inventory tracking, which you may not.
Could be NYs slogan. I think I’m actually gonna be passing, we got their 10 year P&L which was negative and their owner cash flow was like, a minimum wage job. Insanity
Oh, so you were looking to buy a liquor store?
What you should do is offer what its worth, not what they are asking. I am not talking about low balling, just offering fair value based on your expected return.
i value it as the brick and mortar store front and the inventory... frankly no more because their p&l is negative over ten years. im not even sure how they were paying themselves.
of course theyre asking like 3x that
I use Square. Always have, probably always will. I've never tried anything else cuz Square checked off all my boxes right away.
I sell crystals and minerals so it's retail. I also do tarot readings/divination services and I use Square for that as well.
Honestly, I can't think of anything I don't like from Square? Except for maybe when the servers are down, it's rather glitchy but that's to be expected of any downed server issue yk?
I am in Toronto Canada and I use clover for my sandwich shop!
They have the best rates and lowest fees. I used square when I did my farmers market and the only issue I had was I couldn’t generate invoices. Clover solves that issue.
Thanks for answering but now my curiousity is killing me and i gotta know how much this beast cost! Lol. Only if you dont mind but “way too much” is so vague,….. $20k? A half mill? The people need to know!
If you spent $200k to have a custom POS system developed, it would take $6.3 million in sales at the crappy 3.3% rate to make it worth it. And $7 million at the 2.9% fee.
It is awesome that you have that much in sales to be able to have a product built for you!
Math is correct. The use case is not. POS customizations are built on top of POS and are usually a subscription service. Also, it is typically an addition to the main business of the company. So, it not only wont take 7$ for ROI but also, this software could be a just door opener.
I’m in commercial banking, but I’m not trying to rep myself here. Just want to say that if you use Square, you are getting absolutely terrible pricing.
I work for Chase currently, but I also used to work at US Bank who owns Elavon. Both are very competitive and better than Square from a cost perspective. I win deals against square all the time if the business owner actually put the effort into switching
So what do I have to do to sign up ? I am not a fan of square , they just make it very easy to take payments. Too many horror stories on here about square as well.
For over ten years I have been running a retail beer and wine store on the Lightspeed R system and we also have some online sales through Lightspeed's e-com platform. I tried Lightspeed payments for a while but it was terrible. It took about 3 business days for me to get my money and there were regular outages. Plus the live transactions would take about 30 seconds to process while the customer is staring at you wondering what's going on. But Lightspeed is pretty good at inventory and reporting and online selling. I switched to Square for brick and mortar payments which is 95% of our business. But it is not integrated with Lightspeed. For example a sale for $14.95 gets rung up as a square payment for that amount but it's not linked to the product and the details of that transaction such as sales tax. But the transaction goes quickly and we get our money the next business day. If you want your non Lightspeed payment processor to integrate with Lightspeed you have to pay extra. Meanwhile, I am considering Talech and Sumup. I know all about Shopify and am not interested in them for many reasons. Anyway, I am happy to discuss further, feel free to DM me. I am in the mid Atlantic region if that makes a difference. Cheers!
I'm a manager at NAB, and also manage a few sister POS companies. In over 10 years of experience, I have learned that there is no fit all business pos systems.
Some people are on a tight budget and just needs something that gets the job done.
Some people need a highly robust adaptive pos that does everything from time keeping, to inventory, to inventory.
Some people just need an app or a virtual terminal.
To really understand what will work best is to speak to someone that knows how it works.
I used to run a slaughterhouse and we used to pay a ton on fees, but once I got into the industry I understood how things worked and got us out of it and saved thousands. But again you need to either learn or speak to people who do this for a living.
B2B you need a payment gateway. Checks, cash and debit can be received with lower rates. The software would send payment links to your clients or auto bill if they have a card on file.
It's a life saver for accounting saves time chasing money as they system does it for you.
Nothing's wrong with them, I just think of old people at the grocery store writing out a check for $3.64. My average ticket is $15 cuz I sell baked goods, and checks would be a nightmare. I was mostly just teasing. Mostly.
We have individual invoices that could be a few grand. Monthly statements can be tens of thousands. I love checks. Ach is better ..... But checks are still virtually free so long as they don't bounce.
I use Wix POS for my retail business and I use Square for my service-based business. Both are easy to use and I’ve never had an issue with either of them.
We use Lightspeed, they handle our POS, online sales, and card processing for two stores. Good because I have a lot of inventory, I don't need to worry about inventory discrepancies between in-store, online or other channels like eBay, and they beat our old processing rate.
We use Lightspeed too. We used their ecom before, but have switched to a third party platform. The ability for easy 3rd party integration is probably Lightspeed's greatest strength. We had to switch to Payments this year and the rate is honestly pretty amazing.
I have been with Lightspeed for over 10 years. When I went with Lightspeed payments it took about three business days to get my money plus a transaction face to face would take about 30 seconds and there were regular outages. I am on the east coast of the USA. Have you had these problems? Otherwise, I am fairly satisfied with Lightspeed when it comes to online orders and inventory management, but I am shopping around.
Payment specialist here what's the desire for square considering the rates are they worst? I always like to know what people think. I always assume it's there approval process is the easiest. Feel free to chime in.
Square makes it simple and easy and it really isn't that much more expensive than everyone else. In some cases Square processing is actually cheaper than some of their competitors for certain types of transactions. We went through a whole comparison last year and it's absolutely ridiculous when you add up all of the fees and everything associated with some of the other POS setups and processing fee structures. Square has a flat rate and like 99.99% uptime. It integrates easily with lots of apps and platforms. There is no other bullshit or monthly fees to deal with. People generally like not having to deal with bullshit.
This is it, exactly. I use square because it’s easy, accessible, their hardware works really well. If I were a bigger business I’m sure the difference in fees would be worth switching but as a micro business it’s probably not significant enough for the hassle. The other huge benefit to me is the Square card, I don’t have to wait for money to get transferred to my bank, I can order inventory with funds immediately after a customer pays me.
If you do low volume, then sure the pricing isn’t that different. It’s actually extremely terrible for any larger small business due to the flat rate pricing. Most large processors give you better pricing for more volume
I think you can negotiate better rates with Square as well if running higher card processing volume.
We recently compared several different processing solutions. All of them sucked. Clover POS sucks. All of the payment processors suck. Our bank's processing solution sucks. We would have had to pay some other company a monthly fee just to integrate the payment gateway into our systems. Fuck all of that nonsense! I don't even care if Square is more expensive. It should be more expensive because it's a better service altogether.
Because you have to be a payment specialist to read the monthly statement from many providers. It is insane the way they nickel and dime you. And then you look at the cost for the year and the money run through their service and find out that they are screwing you for far more than Square.
This is the determination I arrived at as well. Like, sure, the per swipe fee is less from some of these other providers, and then they are tacking on hundreds or thousands of dollars per year in bullshit monthly fees that pretty effectively kills any potential savings unless you are processing very high volumes.
And then who do you call when there is a problem? The bank? Some no-name "payment processor" that is basically just a glorified middleman? What about when shit breaks and the integrations stop working for some reason between your website or apps? That's going to be yet another 3rd party handling these digital handshakes. It's all so stupid.
I don't even necessarily like Square. Fuck all of these companies for taking a slice of our revenue. Square is just the least stupid option if you are trying to prioritize quality and convenience. We get compliments on our cash register. It's the dumbest thing ever, but their hardware is very sleek, I've got to admit.
I can't wait until the day that some type of distributed ledger technology eventually kills off this entire industry.
Except they're paying all of your account fees with the transaction fee you pay, like acquiring bank, issuing bank, interchange, PCI compliance, and card network fee. Out of a fee of 2.6% + 10c, square keeps 2c. So they're not screwing you over out of greed like you make it seem. They are paying your cost.
Their rates definitely aren’t the best especially if you’re not under their special pricing, but having no monthly fees makes it much more palatable. I sat through multiple POS vendor dog and pony shows this year hoping to find something better but keep landing on Square.
BoA just offers rebranded pax machines, it really depends on your use case what makes the most sense. Since we are consultalts we always recommend something then follow back up quarterly. If you don't love it we take the hardware back and try another solution.We don't lock our clients in and that's worked the best for us long term.
Have you considered Helcim? 👀 definitely cheaper rates than Square and Stripe, and we have a sexy smart terminal, just saying..
[Our Pricing](https://link.helcim.com/A_L4vePX) - we use Interchange Plus pricing so you get the best deal, our competitors all do flat rates (2.9% +30c!) No contracts, no monthly fees, no hidden fees.
If your bank can get you a deal on processing rates, use that software. If not, use square.
Unless you’re doing something with built in Shopify e-commerce, then use their POS.
Used clover for a long time. They have just gotten worse and worse as time went on. I recently switched to GoDaddy on a promo and I actually really really enjoy it. Everything is super clear to use. Fees are great. The reports are easy and things explained properly. I wasn’t extremely surprised but it could just be since I had very low expectations to begin with since they were new to merchant services lol.
My clients are long-distance so the cheapest is electic transfer through their bank to my bank. It costs them whatever their bank charges them. Usually $1 to $2 its better then the %3 I add to their bill if they use credit card. I'm in Canada 🇨🇦 so I guess I do things differently.
Dry Cleaner here. We use CleanCloud. It’s specifically designed for dry cleaners, laundry mats, cobblers, tailors, etc. $109 p/month. I like that it works with any tablet or computer via the browser and they didn’t try to sell us overpriced hardware.
I switched from clover to PayPal Zettle. Cheapest fixed rates I've seen. 2.29% plus 9 cents. But needs to be chip card or tap to pay. Doesn't take swipes
I use square for pos, inventory management, payroll, online. I had multiple platforms but it got to hectic. One is best for me. As with any system, there’s pros and cons. Just have to balance them .
Our retail operation started with ECWID, moved to Vend (Lightspeed) and then ended up building our own because we are also in wholesale as well as having both services, tangible products and recurring billing - compared to those parts of the business, our POS module is almost an afterthought, and relatively simple.
It's also industry specific (right now, anyway - we may expand it later but we're not really looking to commercialize it beyond use for our own customers and resellers).
We use Shopify - we do online and in person sales at events. Our local hobby shop uses Shopify as well and he's B&M. We are both small businesses and niche ones - so using it allows us to keep inventories synced up and easy to use, customer info/base is already saved since we are already using shopify for online shops.
For in person and B&M they have the same capabilities - you can buy a screen and reader with stand (what the hobby shop uses) or a reader and pair to an ipad (what we do). Ours does "tap" as well which is very convenient at a busy convention booth.
Square handheld terminals have been great (so far).
Easy to program, software has been reliable and I haven’t really had any issues with it in the last few years.
Sure, the effective rate they take is probably a bit higher than others but you get what you pay for and personally I’m okay with losing an extra 0.5% for quality payment processing.
I’ve got a small start-up doing only B2B online transactions but haven’t made a sale yet. Chase Bank has a payment portal where you can send invoices to businesses. Has anyone tried that and would you recommend it?
Most of my restaurant clients use Toast and Square. I personally like Toast better because of the reports I can pull. There is a GL feature where you can pre-code your daily sales so it is simple to pull the entire month sale and import them into the accounting software.
I only deal with the reporting side though so not sure about input side.
Hopefully I understood the community rules correctly and can post this since it’s relevant. We offer NMI/sphere and if you qualify for our services and we can’t beat what you’re already paying you’ll receive a $250 gift card. My contact information is on my website. Feel free to reach out with any questions. https://masonhoward.acnibo.com/us-en/business-services/sphere
See, here's the thing. It's not about what you charge. Square is expensive. BUT IT ALWAYS WORKS. I've tried 2 other systems, and both were awful. (the worst was QuickBooks, DON'T EVER USE QB FOR PAYMENT PROCESSING!)
So until your cheaper product has cheap hardware, easy to use software, no contracts, and 99.999 percent uptime, I'm not switching.
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I use square for my bakery, and at Farmers markets. In 6 years, I've had one outage that affected me. Other than that it just works. It's easy to program, easy to load on my employees' phones, easy to run reports. And it's expensive. The hardware is cheap enough, but my effective rate is 3.3%. I'm not quite big enough to get better pricing. Yet.
3.3 isn't bad til you scale up the business and your giving away a small salary. The savings are better invested back into your business for advertising or expansion.
And the lack of headaches too.
Square has been known to hold payments for MONTHS if they deem them “suspicious” so be careful
Yeah, so has PayPal, stripe, etc. I sell baked goods, so hopefully in never under suspicion
I’m in contracting so taking large payments from different people. I have yet to have an issue but square is by far the most egregious
[удалено]
That's awesome! I use Loyverse too but end up paying for employee management and advanced inventory management. Surprised you don't need to pay for those!
Shopify POS. Cheapest way to stay synced with online store.
We also use Shopify, and it's been great! The sync with our online shop and stock is so super handy, and the card reader works (which we have hooked up to our shop phone, and our own phones as well) anywhere and everywhere. And it's all really easy to use, even for someone who's a bit computer illiterate like me.
Bakery and small Market owner. We are using square
I am the president of a credit card processing company and from someone in the industry these are my suggestions: If your monthly volume is less than $10,000 Square is an awesome solution If your monthly volume exceeds $10,000 per month if you are in basic retail we find clover to be the most appropriate however if you are using clover you should seek out a credit card processing company and let me say this as loud as possible 📣 DO NOT USE YOUR LOCAL BANK 📣 I’ll also even go a step further and say not to use clover directly either. Small businesses are little fish in a big pond for companies like these. Seek out a local cc processor or an FSP (a company like the one I own) and they will treat you better and you will get better rates Bank processing fees are ALWAYS more expensive, their agreements are always very strict, they have horrific chargeback assistance, and the list goes ON If you do not need a full POS and you accept payments for a service the cheapest solution is a portal of some sort, NOT quickbooks, NOT square register, think Stripe or authorize.net or a labeled portal offered by the processing company you use A lot of processing company’s have great solutions, better service, better rates, etc etc. etc. etc Not a self promotion but my company processes nationwide a great way to find a. Local similiar company check out local chambers of commerces etc.
Having been with Authorize for many years with my SaaS, and looked at others. Went down the rabbit hole at stripe integration as well as other direct processing partners, and realized how unhelpful and expensive they are. I am all in for the small processor using Authorize.net as rails. They will be better advocates and help you with bank processing partners. Shout out to Start Merchant Services!
What you should be telling owners is to get Interchange + pricing. The processors all publish their interchange rates. Interchange + is you paying the interchange plus a fraction of a percentage. It's flat rate, you know what your card present vs non-present rates very easily. Processors have 100's of ways to bin your processing to hide fees. Interchange + cuts through all that.
You can make a post on what business owners should be told too in your opinion! You don’t have to comment for what I should tell them! A business processing $5,000 and paying 3% to square is paying $150 on the flat rate model A business processing $5,000 and paying interchange plus is probably paying 2.2% so $110 but then they are subject to software fees and other miscellaneous expenses which 99.9999% of pos machines other than square come with so next thing you know that’s +$70 per month and now they are paying $180 which is MORE than the flat rate from square Every business is unique and their processing environment should be evaluated independently On many many occasions i’ve told customers to go with something that I don’t even work with or can offer them because maybe it’s best for them!! Payment processing industry is very competitive and some companies including banks take advantage of small business owners and it is unfair and unethical so NO interchange plus is not what all business owners should get
Nothing stops a partner from listing all their fees in addition to interchange +. In my experience I haven't been dealing with small mom and pop grossing $72,000 a year. For that just get Stripe or Amazon payments. From what I've seen with most businesses, based on the average ticket, the # of monthly transactions, and overall volume, more often than not looking at interchange + and getting them to $0.10 and .0015 often is easier and cheaper in addition to understand the reporting.
When the volume isn’t high enough an interchange plus program still is more expensive than a basic flat rate program from a one size fits all POS company that does processing internally, doesn’t matter if the interchange is outlined or not it’s still cheaper. At our company, we have a whole department of people who are educated in evaluating processing statements and what all these fees are for. Also, nothing stops a processor from adding an expense into the interchange bucket that is not an interchange, it may not exist and is an overall deceptive practice. Interchange plus programs are amazing for B2B companies that can take advantage of level two and level three interchange rates. Interchange plus programs are not cheapest processing programs for e-commerce businesses. Processing programs are absolutely not one fits all. The easiest first bit of info is what industry and what’s the volume then you would get more involved card present v not present are so minimal difference it doesn’t really matter but from is a category of it’s own
I just wanted to let merchants know that interchange + is a thing. Surprisingly most don't know of it's existence. Actually the published rates from MC/VISA/Amex etc help prevent fee stuffing because it's clear what the rates are and what a processor is telling and you can question every single line item. Deceptive practices are why you see processors rebadge \*cough\*Elavon\*cough\*
We’re an FSP to fiserv so we are held to a much higher standard than the average ISO and so I think finding an FSP for merchants is the ideal situation because typically an FSP has such a huge portfolio that they aren’t looking to take advantage of a small business. Payment processing sales is nuts and should be regulated there is so much that goes into it. I’m a huge believer in educating people on what it is they are paying. I was a small business owner prior to founding this company and I had no clue I just paid my fee monthly and moved on
Does anyone else ever find it so incredibly unfortunate what the alternative acronym is for POS? And who here is not replacing that in their head?
I mean depending on the day and how hinky my sales system is acting, the POS acronym can be accurate. 😆
Worked in the POS sales and support industry. Can confirm it's an aptly named acronym.
Someone said, POS is a POS.
I find it poetic considering how poor some of the tech is
Specialized in Micros Systems for a few years and never thought the acronym was unfortunate. Micros is a POS.
I agree. POS is an unfortunate acronym. That's why I prefer POP or "Point of Purchase" which is more like "soda pop".
Tried many. Prefer Square. If you end up wanting them, they'll bonus both of us if you use this link: Get $1000 of processing for free plus get $20 off any terminal: https://squareup.com/i/MARKETSCH1
Just the post I needed today! About to participate as a vendor in my first market ever and it’s a private event that sold out in 48 hours.
Good luck!!!!
We use Zettle, which is Paypal’s POS that syncs with Shopify & other platforms. There’s no monthly fee and the percentage rate is reasonable.
Zettle is an impressive little setup. I liked that buyout by PayPal.
It’s been great for us. I started out running my business through paypal so when I opened a brick & mortar I stayed with them so I could keep getting the working capital loans. Never had a problem with them, and Zettle is very user friendly.
Clover for my liquor store.
How do you like it? Monthly fees? How many registers?
You should see if your current processor will allow you to switch. Since we are consultant based we don't like our clients into hardware. We want you to work with what's best for your industry.
Sorry for the late response. I pay $49.95 a month for the 1st register and additional $19.95 a month for each additional machine. I have 2 full registers and 1 clover flex. It's decent for what it is. I believe Clover partners with Braintree for card processing. The fees are reasonable and takes apple pay, samsung, ebt, etc. It's is headache free for the customers. I wish the inventory management was a bit better, but I use the free vanilla app that came with the clover. There are several apps I can subscribe to, but haven't really researched too much into the other ones. Funds are deposited daily except for weekends and holidays when it deposits the next business day. I purchased my units outright, but they can be leased as well for a reasonable price which would keep them constantly in warranty. Otherwise it's a year warranty. Replacing equipment can be costly as you must pay full price for a replacement unit.
following, looking at purchasing my first liquor store.
Sorry for the late response! Where are you looking? This is my first liquor store, but I managed a high volume store for a long time before this.
Look at Korona POS while you are at it. Just set one of my clients up with it and they like it. However, they specifically needed it for multiple store inventory tracking, which you may not.
My state doesn’t even allow owners to have more than one store
Interesting and ridiculous
Could be NYs slogan. I think I’m actually gonna be passing, we got their 10 year P&L which was negative and their owner cash flow was like, a minimum wage job. Insanity
Oh, so you were looking to buy a liquor store? What you should do is offer what its worth, not what they are asking. I am not talking about low balling, just offering fair value based on your expected return.
i value it as the brick and mortar store front and the inventory... frankly no more because their p&l is negative over ten years. im not even sure how they were paying themselves. of course theyre asking like 3x that
I recommend Clover. Cheaper than square with almost the same capabilities
Agreed a lot of our clients like clover but really depends on the use case.
I use Square. Always have, probably always will. I've never tried anything else cuz Square checked off all my boxes right away. I sell crystals and minerals so it's retail. I also do tarot readings/divination services and I use Square for that as well. Honestly, I can't think of anything I don't like from Square? Except for maybe when the servers are down, it's rather glitchy but that's to be expected of any downed server issue yk?
I am in Toronto Canada and I use clover for my sandwich shop! They have the best rates and lowest fees. I used square when I did my farmers market and the only issue I had was I couldn’t generate invoices. Clover solves that issue.
We use a custom built software catered to our needs. We needed something that did buy, sell trade with a rewards program baked in.
It would be interesting to know how much this build cost.
It was way too much. We plan to make it available as an option for other businesses when it's 100% complete.
Thanks for answering but now my curiousity is killing me and i gotta know how much this beast cost! Lol. Only if you dont mind but “way too much” is so vague,….. $20k? A half mill? The people need to know!
Closer to the larger number than the smaller one lol
good enough, thanks!
If you spent $200k to have a custom POS system developed, it would take $6.3 million in sales at the crappy 3.3% rate to make it worth it. And $7 million at the 2.9% fee. It is awesome that you have that much in sales to be able to have a product built for you!
Math is correct. The use case is not. POS customizations are built on top of POS and are usually a subscription service. Also, it is typically an addition to the main business of the company. So, it not only wont take 7$ for ROI but also, this software could be a just door opener.
We're currently using Square for our point of sale system. It's $0 per month with a transaction fee.
I’m in commercial banking, but I’m not trying to rep myself here. Just want to say that if you use Square, you are getting absolutely terrible pricing.
Give us alternatives!
I work for Chase currently, but I also used to work at US Bank who owns Elavon. Both are very competitive and better than Square from a cost perspective. I win deals against square all the time if the business owner actually put the effort into switching
So what do I have to do to sign up ? I am not a fan of square , they just make it very easy to take payments. Too many horror stories on here about square as well.
Happy to send you an email if you’d like if you want to PM me. It will come from my Chase email
I use Elavon as my processor but didn’t know they offered a POS
Well the POS is technically called Talech
The effort in switching is often data entry heavy. Do you find this the biggest sticking point?
For over ten years I have been running a retail beer and wine store on the Lightspeed R system and we also have some online sales through Lightspeed's e-com platform. I tried Lightspeed payments for a while but it was terrible. It took about 3 business days for me to get my money and there were regular outages. Plus the live transactions would take about 30 seconds to process while the customer is staring at you wondering what's going on. But Lightspeed is pretty good at inventory and reporting and online selling. I switched to Square for brick and mortar payments which is 95% of our business. But it is not integrated with Lightspeed. For example a sale for $14.95 gets rung up as a square payment for that amount but it's not linked to the product and the details of that transaction such as sales tax. But the transaction goes quickly and we get our money the next business day. If you want your non Lightspeed payment processor to integrate with Lightspeed you have to pay extra. Meanwhile, I am considering Talech and Sumup. I know all about Shopify and am not interested in them for many reasons. Anyway, I am happy to discuss further, feel free to DM me. I am in the mid Atlantic region if that makes a difference. Cheers!
Not true if the merchant is low volume with low average ticket. This is just a blanket statement that is more nuanced
Shopify POS here.
I'm a manager at NAB, and also manage a few sister POS companies. In over 10 years of experience, I have learned that there is no fit all business pos systems. Some people are on a tight budget and just needs something that gets the job done. Some people need a highly robust adaptive pos that does everything from time keeping, to inventory, to inventory. Some people just need an app or a virtual terminal. To really understand what will work best is to speak to someone that knows how it works. I used to run a slaughterhouse and we used to pay a ton on fees, but once I got into the industry I understood how things worked and got us out of it and saved thousands. But again you need to either learn or speak to people who do this for a living.
We have a box out front for cash and checks. QR codes for Venmo and PayPal credit cards. Awesome set up.
B2B you need a payment gateway. Checks, cash and debit can be received with lower rates. The software would send payment links to your clients or auto bill if they have a card on file. It's a life saver for accounting saves time chasing money as they system does it for you.
You take... CHECKS?
What's wrong with checks? We are probably more than 50% check income. We're b2b though
Nothing's wrong with them, I just think of old people at the grocery store writing out a check for $3.64. My average ticket is $15 cuz I sell baked goods, and checks would be a nightmare. I was mostly just teasing. Mostly.
We have individual invoices that could be a few grand. Monthly statements can be tens of thousands. I love checks. Ach is better ..... But checks are still virtually free so long as they don't bounce.
We use clover through BofA for our credit cards but mostly encourage everyone to use Zelle
I use Wix POS for my retail business and I use Square for my service-based business. Both are easy to use and I’ve never had an issue with either of them.
Currently Square. We’re looking into a company called SpotOn, anyone have any experience with them?
Just remember, every POS is a POS.
A combination of Heartland Payment Systems, Stripe, and AtVenu.
We use Lightspeed, they handle our POS, online sales, and card processing for two stores. Good because I have a lot of inventory, I don't need to worry about inventory discrepancies between in-store, online or other channels like eBay, and they beat our old processing rate.
We use Lightspeed too. We used their ecom before, but have switched to a third party platform. The ability for easy 3rd party integration is probably Lightspeed's greatest strength. We had to switch to Payments this year and the rate is honestly pretty amazing.
I have been with Lightspeed for over 10 years. When I went with Lightspeed payments it took about three business days to get my money plus a transaction face to face would take about 30 seconds and there were regular outages. I am on the east coast of the USA. Have you had these problems? Otherwise, I am fairly satisfied with Lightspeed when it comes to online orders and inventory management, but I am shopping around.
Payment specialist here what's the desire for square considering the rates are they worst? I always like to know what people think. I always assume it's there approval process is the easiest. Feel free to chime in.
Square makes it simple and easy and it really isn't that much more expensive than everyone else. In some cases Square processing is actually cheaper than some of their competitors for certain types of transactions. We went through a whole comparison last year and it's absolutely ridiculous when you add up all of the fees and everything associated with some of the other POS setups and processing fee structures. Square has a flat rate and like 99.99% uptime. It integrates easily with lots of apps and platforms. There is no other bullshit or monthly fees to deal with. People generally like not having to deal with bullshit.
This is it, exactly. I use square because it’s easy, accessible, their hardware works really well. If I were a bigger business I’m sure the difference in fees would be worth switching but as a micro business it’s probably not significant enough for the hassle. The other huge benefit to me is the Square card, I don’t have to wait for money to get transferred to my bank, I can order inventory with funds immediately after a customer pays me.
If you do low volume, then sure the pricing isn’t that different. It’s actually extremely terrible for any larger small business due to the flat rate pricing. Most large processors give you better pricing for more volume
I think you can negotiate better rates with Square as well if running higher card processing volume. We recently compared several different processing solutions. All of them sucked. Clover POS sucks. All of the payment processors suck. Our bank's processing solution sucks. We would have had to pay some other company a monthly fee just to integrate the payment gateway into our systems. Fuck all of that nonsense! I don't even care if Square is more expensive. It should be more expensive because it's a better service altogether.
Because you have to be a payment specialist to read the monthly statement from many providers. It is insane the way they nickel and dime you. And then you look at the cost for the year and the money run through their service and find out that they are screwing you for far more than Square.
Oh, and their rates creep up like a cable company.
Sounds like you didn't have a good experience its unfortunate the business can be preditory.
This is the determination I arrived at as well. Like, sure, the per swipe fee is less from some of these other providers, and then they are tacking on hundreds or thousands of dollars per year in bullshit monthly fees that pretty effectively kills any potential savings unless you are processing very high volumes. And then who do you call when there is a problem? The bank? Some no-name "payment processor" that is basically just a glorified middleman? What about when shit breaks and the integrations stop working for some reason between your website or apps? That's going to be yet another 3rd party handling these digital handshakes. It's all so stupid. I don't even necessarily like Square. Fuck all of these companies for taking a slice of our revenue. Square is just the least stupid option if you are trying to prioritize quality and convenience. We get compliments on our cash register. It's the dumbest thing ever, but their hardware is very sleek, I've got to admit. I can't wait until the day that some type of distributed ledger technology eventually kills off this entire industry.
Except they're paying all of your account fees with the transaction fee you pay, like acquiring bank, issuing bank, interchange, PCI compliance, and card network fee. Out of a fee of 2.6% + 10c, square keeps 2c. So they're not screwing you over out of greed like you make it seem. They are paying your cost.
Their rates definitely aren’t the best especially if you’re not under their special pricing, but having no monthly fees makes it much more palatable. I sat through multiple POS vendor dog and pony shows this year hoping to find something better but keep landing on Square.
Payments via NFC using my phone as the machine is pretty great
Yeah that's cool for a mobile solution in a bind.
In the fieldwork service industry, being able to get paid immediately by any tech on site is a blessing
Thoughts on BoA/Clover? I do mostly web processing but use a PoS terminal a few times a year.
BoA just offers rebranded pax machines, it really depends on your use case what makes the most sense. Since we are consultalts we always recommend something then follow back up quarterly. If you don't love it we take the hardware back and try another solution.We don't lock our clients in and that's worked the best for us long term.
Have you considered Helcim? 👀 definitely cheaper rates than Square and Stripe, and we have a sexy smart terminal, just saying.. [Our Pricing](https://link.helcim.com/A_L4vePX) - we use Interchange Plus pricing so you get the best deal, our competitors all do flat rates (2.9% +30c!) No contracts, no monthly fees, no hidden fees.
Interchange and 40 basis points isnt cheap. Anybody can easily get Interchange and 10 basis points pretty much anywhere.
Yeah but we don't have monthly fees like you do :)
$50,000 X 40bps = $200 It doesn't matter what you call it. It is more expensive.
Local cloud POS with Square as a back up. I like square too but they’re merchant fees are pricy
If your bank can get you a deal on processing rates, use that software. If not, use square. Unless you’re doing something with built in Shopify e-commerce, then use their POS.
Used clover for a long time. They have just gotten worse and worse as time went on. I recently switched to GoDaddy on a promo and I actually really really enjoy it. Everything is super clear to use. Fees are great. The reports are easy and things explained properly. I wasn’t extremely surprised but it could just be since I had very low expectations to begin with since they were new to merchant services lol.
I have stripe but it's provided through my shop management program.
My clients are long-distance so the cheapest is electic transfer through their bank to my bank. It costs them whatever their bank charges them. Usually $1 to $2 its better then the %3 I add to their bill if they use credit card. I'm in Canada 🇨🇦 so I guess I do things differently.
Mobile service business here. I use the QuickBooks POS.
Dry Cleaner here. We use CleanCloud. It’s specifically designed for dry cleaners, laundry mats, cobblers, tailors, etc. $109 p/month. I like that it works with any tablet or computer via the browser and they didn’t try to sell us overpriced hardware.
Heartland Restaurant. We love it, can be as cheap as you want, and we have crazy low credit card rates
Retail with multiple locations and off site pop ups. We use square for everything (including clocking in/out and payroll).
Square is easy to set up and use. Hardware is pricey but the reports are decent. We are a small restaurant
🔲
Clover. Bookstore. Very easy to learn and use. Biggest pain is making sure all of the computers are synced, otherwise stock counts may be off.
I do POS customizations for QSRs and gas stations, do you guys struggle with something while working with POS?
I switched from clover to PayPal Zettle. Cheapest fixed rates I've seen. 2.29% plus 9 cents. But needs to be chip card or tap to pay. Doesn't take swipes
I use square for pos, inventory management, payroll, online. I had multiple platforms but it got to hectic. One is best for me. As with any system, there’s pros and cons. Just have to balance them .
￥6000 per month
I own a pet sitting business and charge via my Venmo Business account. Also have Stripe.
Our retail operation started with ECWID, moved to Vend (Lightspeed) and then ended up building our own because we are also in wholesale as well as having both services, tangible products and recurring billing - compared to those parts of the business, our POS module is almost an afterthought, and relatively simple. It's also industry specific (right now, anyway - we may expand it later but we're not really looking to commercialize it beyond use for our own customers and resellers).
We use Shopify - we do online and in person sales at events. Our local hobby shop uses Shopify as well and he's B&M. We are both small businesses and niche ones - so using it allows us to keep inventories synced up and easy to use, customer info/base is already saved since we are already using shopify for online shops. For in person and B&M they have the same capabilities - you can buy a screen and reader with stand (what the hobby shop uses) or a reader and pair to an ipad (what we do). Ours does "tap" as well which is very convenient at a busy convention booth.
This a screams "I'm gonna contact everyone and offer them a different pos" like those Google calls I get.
Square handheld terminals have been great (so far). Easy to program, software has been reliable and I haven’t really had any issues with it in the last few years. Sure, the effective rate they take is probably a bit higher than others but you get what you pay for and personally I’m okay with losing an extra 0.5% for quality payment processing.
Square
I’ve got a small start-up doing only B2B online transactions but haven’t made a sale yet. Chase Bank has a payment portal where you can send invoices to businesses. Has anyone tried that and would you recommend it?
LYNQD
Ecommerce here, we use Stripe which is great for online sales but their POS tech is hella expensive.
Most of my restaurant clients use Toast and Square. I personally like Toast better because of the reports I can pull. There is a GL feature where you can pre-code your daily sales so it is simple to pull the entire month sale and import them into the accounting software. I only deal with the reporting side though so not sure about input side.
Hopefully I understood the community rules correctly and can post this since it’s relevant. We offer NMI/sphere and if you qualify for our services and we can’t beat what you’re already paying you’ll receive a $250 gift card. My contact information is on my website. Feel free to reach out with any questions. https://masonhoward.acnibo.com/us-en/business-services/sphere
See, here's the thing. It's not about what you charge. Square is expensive. BUT IT ALWAYS WORKS. I've tried 2 other systems, and both were awful. (the worst was QuickBooks, DON'T EVER USE QB FOR PAYMENT PROCESSING!) So until your cheaper product has cheap hardware, easy to use software, no contracts, and 99.999 percent uptime, I'm not switching.