Chances are you’ve heard of Square, the mobile payment processing company created by Twitter’s Co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. The great news is that Square is now available in Australia thanks to the APIs to e-commerce and Point of Sale today being enabled for this region.
The new ‘Build with Square’ payment APIs allow any sized businesses to enable payments from multiple vendors both online and offline to use Square’s integrated platform. For businesses with a self-hosted e-commerce website, Square offers an alternate to PayPal for customers during the ordering process.
Square now integrations BigCommerce, Weebly, Ecwid, WooCommerce, Magento and Wix, making it really easy to implement into pre-existing shopfronts. Sales processed online will now show in Square Dashboard, so sellers have a holistic view of all sales processed in store and online from one convenient location.
Square’s Australian Country Manager, Ben Pfisterer says,
“We’re excited to launch Square’s payment APIs in Australia, which vastly increases the capability of the Square platform and enables deeper partnerships with third party solutions. It’s more common than ever for businesses of any size to sell their products or services online and in-person, so having a fully integrated omni-channel system gives them a powerful advantage.
With Square, businesses can now accept payments through any channel and gain a single, holistic view of their business, which vastly reduces the complexity of having to navigate numerous, disparate systems. Square is proud to continue releasing new features and products with today’s announcement being another example of our ongoing commitment to keep bringing unique and innovative solutions to Australian businesses.”
When it comes to point of sale, the Square API allows any iOS or Android point of sale platform to enable customised payment processing with Square. If you choose to move to Square for payments, you can leverage their pretty sexy UI and hardware (such as the Square Reader for contactless and chip) with third-party point of sale platforms, while enjoying the same simple, flat-rate pricing that’s available to all Square sellers.
Melbourne-based tech startup SwiftHero matches tradespeople with those who need them, is the first to integrate with Square’s new API for point of sale. This means tradespeople can now accept card payments right from the SwiftHero app using affordable and accessible hardware, while overcoming challenges of payments partnerships often experienced by startup companies.
Co-founder at SwiftHero, Hacik Ozdil said,
“Using Square’s API for point of sale has made taking card payments on the spot effortless, which is what everyone is starting to expect. Payments are instant, making SwiftHero providers’ and customers’ lives easier”
“Integrating couldn’t have been easier; as simple as plugging a Square Reader into a phone. This level of simplicity and ease of integration has allowed us to focus more time on SwiftHero.”
So now for the price, to integrate Square’s APIs into your platform its free (as you’d expect), while payments using the Square API for e-commerce are charged at the flat rate of 2.2% per transaction for any Visa, MasterCard or American Express transaction. Card payments accepted in-person using Square hardware via applications integrated with our API for point of sale are charged at 1.9% per transaction for any Visa, MasterCard or American Express transaction. Square says there are no other hidden fees or lock-in contracts.
If you want to buy the Square hardware, you’ll pay A$59 for the Square Contactless + Chip reader (NFC + EMV + Magstripe) which is perfect for those without a headphone jack (looking at you iPhone 7 owners). The Square Chip Card Reader without NFC is a cheaper $19.
One of the best assets Square has, is its ability to integrate with IFTTT. This means you can leverage all sorts of creative implementations for payments. Like If I get paid, flash my Hue light bulbs all of the colours. You can have payments added to a spreadsheet or receive push notifications or emails over a certain value. The options here really are endless with new hardware and services adding IFTTT support every week. I imagine Amazon Echo’s being used for ‘Alexa, how much did I make this week?’
For more information head to https://squareup.com/au and if you’re a developer, head to https://squareup.com/au/developers
