Our Review of Square Card Reader
December 14, 2011By: Sean Murray
Thumbs up! This is my 3rd and last product review this week and I’m happy to leave it off on a good note. We got to test out Square, the mobile payment technology that has been out for some time, and it rocks! I don’t normally play around with POS hardware or software but was encouraged by a close friend and small business owner to be more hands on.
Square is easy, extremely easy. The process of taking it out of the box and moving forward step by step until I was able to process my first transaction took a total of 11 minutes.
WHOA!
I’ve been accustomed to the payments industry standard of 1-3 days to approve and activate a merchant account. This is a whole different playing field entirely. The card reader fit right into my iPhone 4, which is currently using iOS 5.0. I downloaded the Square software from the App Store and minutes later I was processing. No instructions are necessary. The entire setup is intuitive.
The fees are fairly competitive and less expensive than PayPal. There is supposedly next-day deposit, a feature that is not even common amongst regular retail merchant accounts. I’m impressed all around.
I don’t work for Square and the last product review ( MacPOS ) I did was not very positive so I’m giving you my straight, unedited, unbiased opinion. For further information, you can contact me at Sean@merchantprocessingresource.com or visit Square at SquareUp.com
If you actually noticed the time displayed on the top of my iPhone in some of the frames, there is a gap of time longer than 11 minutes. I had to take a very important call in the middle of the process, plus I went back and redid some of the photos and screenshots. Don’t hold it against me.
-Sean
Sean is the founder of Merchant Processing Resource, the co-founder of the Merchant Cash Advance forum, DailyFunder.com, the developer of the first Merchant Cash Advance industry iPhone app, and a moderator of both the Small Business and Entrepreneur communities on Google+. Learn more about his Merchant Cash Advance background on LinkedIn or follow him on Google+.
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Category: Insider's perspective, MPR Authored, sales, Small Business, Small Business Corner, small business owners
