Square Up – A New Way For ANYONE To Accept Credit Card Payments

Screen Capture From squarup.com

Wouldn’t it be great if anyone could simply and affordably accept a credit card payment?  Well folks, the day has come where you can thanks to a new service called Square Up.

When you sign up with their service, they send you a FREE little card swiper which plugs into the headphone plug of your mobile phone (the system is compatible with both Apple iOS and Android devices) and you’re up and running.

If you’ve ever priced a traditional commercial credit card vendor account (I have for my business), you know they can be cost prohibitive, with set up fees, monthly fees, and transaction fees that don’t make sense for many small businesses let alone a private individual.    Square up does away with all that – they just charge 2.75% plus .15 of each swipe transaction which runs through their service, and they make weekly deposits to the bank account you designate.  The service also allows you the capability to key in transactions, but at a higher fee – 3.5% plus .15 per transaction.  No monthly or set up fees are involved – even the card swiper doohickey is free!

Will I sign up? Possibly.  The only thing holding me back is the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” factor.  About 80% of my business is conducted through PayPal – the transaction fee they charge is about 3.3%, and I typically see the money in my account in 2-3 days.  But the fact that Square Up doesn’t cost me anything to set up the service will likely push me over the edge? I can’t remember the last time I ran into a customer that wanted to use a credit card and didn’t have PayPal to pay me.  In some cases, a wire transfer, or a good old fashioned mailed check works better.  But again, the barriers for getting set up with Square Up are so low, I think it makes sense to get an account.  Will you?