
Square Terminal - sentiental
https://squareup.com/go/terminal
======
bpicolo
I hope this takes off solely so I can pay with a credit card directly at my
table at restaurants instead of having them take it to back of house. Much of
Europe has been doing this correctly for a long time now

~~~
harryh
Speaking as an American, I've always found at-the-table swiping to be kind of
strange, at least for higher end meals. It puts the commerce part of the
evening a little too front and center for me. Or maybe I'm just not used to
it.

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adamtulinius
You prefer strangers running away with your credit card?

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harryh
I've handed over my card to strangers hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of times
in my life and had no problems to date. So ya, not really worried about it.

~~~
bpicolo
To take the contrary position, my father has had his card info skimmed at
restaurants at least a dozen times over the years. It's a real problem.

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MithrilTuxedo
How is this going to affect how often I get asked to tip? I want to see less
tipping, not more. Square seems to be one of the primary offenders in
introducing bribery to transactions where I don't really want to rate how much
I was pleasured by the personal performance being put on for me. Getting
coffee shouldn't be embarrassing, and don't prompt me to tip you before you
give me what I'm paying for.

~~~
peterwwillis
Tipping helps pay for a worker's living. If tipping didn't exist, the cost
would just go back into the base cost of the drink. One way to get out of the
embarrassment you feel is to tap the preset tip button and go on with your
day.

Tipping isn't bribery. If your barista is making your coffee differently based
on a tip, they're a bad barista.

~~~
Nullabillity
> If tipping didn't exist, the cost would just go back into the base cost of
> the drink.

So the advertised cost would actually be the honest that you would pay for the
product. What a horrible world that would be!

~~~
zaksoup
One thing to keep in mind is that in many states tipped minimum wage is
significantly lower than hourly minimum wage. As low as $2.50 an hour. Tipping
is bad for everybody, including the workers involved, but framing tipping as
purely a response to “performance” isn’t always the whole story.

~~~
kmm
In no state is the minimum wage the employee takes home lower than $7.25 an
hour. The employer can pay them less only if the tips make up the difference,
down to $2.13(!) an hour. Of course, most waiters and servers end up making
quite a bit more.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage)

~~~
pfranz
This is not legal, but often if you're a waiter/waitress and report you're
making less than minimum wage and want to get paid the difference they take
that as you're not performing well enough and will fire you.

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GarrisonPrime
Sigh. A $400 all-in-one solution, released just a few months after I spent
$950 for their prior setup. I'm still making payments on it...

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consto
It looks sleek but the lack of physical buttons seems pretty bad from an
accessibility perspective. And it is another always on screen that will
inevitably always be a little too bright for comfort. As boring as the
traditional terminals you see all around the UK are, they get the job done.

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jdironman
Honest question, I have never used Square, but what does the back-end for
setting up products look like? In a resturant you may have many variations for
a meal (Hamburger, no lettuce, extra mayo, etc.) and some may incur different
fees. Has anyone had experience with that which can provide links or insight?
I ask this because I got asked to help with a local mom and pops (Taco Shop)
setup of their POS and genuinely curious.

~~~
tdeck
I worked on the Square API for more than a year so I am fairly familiar with
their data model for items, although I think it has since been enhanced.

Basically you have an item, and within that item there are variations (like
different SKUs). Items can also have modifiers that apply to that particular
item, and these are multiple choice. So you'd have a burger item say, where
the variations are beef or veggie. Then you'd have modifiers like lettuce,
tomato, onion, etc. Modifiers can have a cost or be free, different variations
have a price.

You can also apply discounts which are like items that affect your total as a
whole or the price of specific other items.

~~~
jdironman
Thank you, very informative. I was sure they had accounted for such use. I am
not sure what system they have chosen (or if they have chosen one yet) but I
will most likely put Square on my list of suggestions if they ask. Thanks
again.

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eaurouge
Any hardware engineer know how one goes about sourcing electronics (IC) for a
chip reader? Thinking directly from the manufacturer, I know you can order
stuff on AliExpress but I'd prefer to be able to rely on the original chip
maker's docs, evaluation kits etc.

~~~
sbr464
I’d be curious in this as well.

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joshuawright11
IMO Square has great looking hardware but their software is pretty mediocre
and unattractive. The Stripe guys are killing it on the software front
recently, wondering if square should continue pushing hard on the hardware
front when stripe is eating their online lunch.

~~~
snuxoll
My problem with Square is they are so focused on their ecosystem that they
basically ignore anyone that doesn't operate a traditional retail store or
restaurant.

I'm really excited about Stripe Terminal as a developer, and I think they can
eat Square's lunch by focusing on purely being the payment intermediary and
letting 3rd parties develop solutions around their SDK (which supports web
browsers in addition to mobile platforms, unlike Square which only supports
iOS and Android and just recently divorced itself from requiring the Square
app too).

~~~
lyricalpanda
The first statement is a bit unfair. Square is pretty generic now, but of
course a one size fits all solution isn't going to cut it for every case. I
don't think that is a negative thing to ignore smaller markets that aren't as
profitable if they dedicate tens/hundreds of millions of dollars towards these
niche markets.

You misunderstand what strengths Square and Stripe both have. Stripe is a pure
API/SDK that integrates with third-parties for everything other than payments.

Square has all those "third-parties" services bundled in to make it a much
smoother experience for merchants. Payroll? Analytics? Dashboard? Everything
is right there for you at Square. Stripe? They just link you to a bunch of
third party sources.

Ultimately it boils down to: Stripe is geared towards more tech-savvy
customers or those who can afford development costs for all these custom
integrations + working with 3rd parties. Square is geared towards people who
want it all in one ecosystem and don't need a lot of customization.

Stripe won't "eat" Square's lunch when it comes down to the base use-case of a
simple merchant wanting an easy onboarding experience and taking payments.
Stripe is anything but that. And for larger merchants you have to worry about
what third-party services you integrate with Stripe - what if one of them goes
under? Switching third-party services might be a huge pain. You don't have to
worry about that with Square. Not to mention that first-party services always
are better than third-party services. Square can always come up with better
services to offer its customers because it has access to all the data. Third-
party services are limited to what they can get via an API.

And as of right now, Square is actually beating Stripe on the SDK game with
the release of ReaderSDK.

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jumelles
If this can _always_ process chip cards that quickly, I'm very impressed.
Usually it's at least 10 seconds, just standing there staring at the card
reader, waiting.

~~~
GarrisonPrime
I use their current (now prior, I guess) chip reader, and it completes the
transaction within just a second or two. Most of my customers are surprised
it's so fast, compared to other chip reading registers around town.

That could be because I'm using a cellular internet conneciton however. My
town's cable internet is notoriously throttled.

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nikolay
The design is pretty ugly. I'm not sure why each device Square sells has
different processing fees. They didn't use to charge a fixed fee ($0.10), but
now they do on all new devices, which gives me no incentive to upgrade. Their
rate is pretty much 1% higher than you can get from a merchant account and
even more when it comes to debit cards. My long-term bet is on Clover and even
Stripe. In a very short term, Square launched a bunch of devices, but most
don't work with Bluetooth barcode scanners, so, their mobile promise is
unfulfilled and this actually is their niche. They also push for the super
expensive Socket barcode scanners - you can buy a better one for a tenth of
the price, but Square won't work with it, because they want to sell you the
expensive Socket. Last, but not least - Square does not give nonprofit
discounts. Both Stripe and PayPal gave our nonprofits half percent off from
the processing fees.

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dawhizkid
I feel like they should've future-proofed a little more by including a
scanner. Scanning QR codes to pay is huge in China (Wechat Pay) and Chase has
their own "Chase Pay" app that lets you pay with a QR code as well. Would also
presumably enable crypto payments.

~~~
floatingatoll
CVS Pharmacy recently gave up on a years-long initiative to convince Americans
to pay with QR codes. It seems market-appropriate, in light of that total
failure, to have reservations about adding camera hardware to a cash register.

~~~
dawhizkid
AFAIK Starbucks' own app represents a sizable percentage of mobile payments in
the U.S. and is QR-code based. I don't think Square should take cues from one
random merchant's failure with QR-code payments to decide whether or not it
will take off in the future. Also I assume Square has ambitions to expand
globally and in doing needs to shake off a western bias when it comes to
payments.

~~~
floatingatoll
CVS just paid $69 billion dollars to buy a health insurer. Calling them a
“random merchant” considerably underestimates both their leverage over, and in
general their relevance to, the payment processing industry.

EDIT:

Square’s 2017Q4 net revenue is about $600 million dollars, CVS’s 2017Q4 net
revenue is about $48 billion dollars. Assuming the retail 2.5% transaction
fee, CVS paid $1.2 billion dollars of credit card fees in 2017Q4,
approximately double Square’s total revenue for that period.

Square would be very wise to take note of CVS’s failure in the QRcode payment
app market, given that CVS generates twice their total net revenue in
_processing fees_ alone.

~~~
dawhizkid
CVS’s main business is not their retail business but their Pharmacy Benefit
Manager biz which they share a duopoly for, which is a b2b business and
nothing to do with the CVS you or I see. To take 2.5% of their revenue and
assume it’s all consumer retail transactions is just completely wrong.

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ProfessorLayton
I've helped run a family home improvement business for a while now, and for
now we're a little wary about accepting electronic payments, since the fees
are so high + the possibility of dealing with a chargeback. It's interesting
that they mention disputes with high 4-figures.

Contracts are routinely over 5 figures, so 2.6% ends up being quite a big cut
just to accepts credit. I suppose a ~2.6% fee could be added, but that still
leaves exposure to chargebacks. Does anyone here have experience using square
with large payment amounts?

~~~
techsupporter
I helped two friends who do trades work set up for taking card payments. Both
report that their average charge amount increased by more than enough to make
paying to accept cards worth it.

As a customer, I can attest to this. The hassle of paying by check (I’ve had
checks stolen and abused, plus I don’t keep them handy any more) or (perish
the thought) cash for more than a couple hundred dollars is not worth it to
me. I will seek out the next-most-trusted contractor who does accept cards and
use that person.

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rajeshpant
How is it different from a payment terminal machine from bank?

~~~
DanCarvajal
Integrates with all the other Square stuff I assume.

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colmvp
I'm going to be curious how it stands up to wear and tear. I notice that these
types of terminals which are brought to tables tend to be pretty beat up.

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cornel
Interesting fact: Square terminal does not support pin entry. Chip and sign or
on device cvm for high value Mobile payments (apple and google pay).

~~~
parliament32
Probably because PIN entry devices have a lot of security standards that you
can't emulate on a touch screen.

It's a shame because basically everyone except the US has moved on to
chip+pin, and the US will transition in the next few years, so this product
won't be around for long.

~~~
cornel
You can have pin entry on a touch screen. Indeed Not as easy as not having pin
entry, due to those security standards, but it is possible. Have a look at
[https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/assessors_and_solutions...](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/assessors_and_solutions/pin_transaction_devices)
and filter on ‘touch screen, as entry technology. Populair name is pin-on-
glass.

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orliesaurus
I hated it on square's software that when I was in "financial high waters" and
the person can see that I clicked the "other tip" and had to give $1 instead
of $2 or $5 tips. That's just a human thing tho, the rest of the square
hardware fleet is on point!

~~~
eddyg
see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18241477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18241477)

~~~
orliesaurus
thank you, that was a good read!

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parliament32
Is it going to ask me for a tip up-front for every single transaction, like
the tablet terminal things do?

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hwc
This is a nice technology, but paying this overhead on every transaction is
highway robbery. Can everyone not in the credit-card/banking industry band
together and negotiate a better rate?

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tonywastaken
Is that an iPhone? iPad? Android?

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matahwoosh
Android-based.

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huac
no chargeback fee is interesting

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hrktb
do you have a specific use case in mind where it’s a big advantage ?

2.6% + fixed fee seems to me mildly high for a card in the reader + pin
entered type of solution. Also chargebacks should be ridiculously rare in this
setting.

~~~
lyricalpanda
2.6% + 10c with no contract fees, no cancellation fees, no minimum amount of
purchases per month. It actually comes out to not be as expensive as most
people think.

