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
I'd even be happy if the United States can go one step prior to this and actually have the customer-facing portion of the terminal (the bit with the slot, keypad, and NFC reader) actually face the customer. I'd use tap-to-pay and such far more often if I could reliably use the part of the terminal that's supposed to be for my use and if it said up front if tap and insert are supported.
Instead, right now we get this madness, especially at a lot of smaller shops, where the clerk is using the merchant side box to enter the payment amount then fumbles around with the customer side pad to insert the card and complete the transaction for me.
Just let me tap or enter my PIN, please.
(I have two cards that are PIN primary. I've put stickers on both that read, in large letters, "THIS CARD USES A PIN PLEASE ALLOW ME TO ENTER IT." On one of them, it has, in smaller letters, "THE TRANSACTION WILL DECLINE IF YOU DON'T.")
That's exactly how it usually works everywhere here in Poland. The terminal faces me, I tap the card to it and enter the PIN. At least in my bank, PIN is needed for every transaction above 50 PLN, so I can't imagine it any different.
I'm on the East Coast, and I find that lots of stores have the user-facing terminals now. Either the are tablets that flip or turn, or they are a permanently outward-facing screen like the Square one. The latter type is definitely preferable.
In Canada, the server generally just brings a terminal to my table with the bill. They put in the amount owed, and I use the terminal to add tip and complete the transaction.
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.
I'm an American who spends a decent amount of time in western Europe, to give you where I'm coming from. At high-end meals it is just like everything else with the service; if done properly, it is just as smooth and elegant as the rest of the meal. I actually prefer the single "interruption" of pay and depart (or not, considering most European dining styles involve a suitable amount of lingering even after payment) versus the request check, check delivered, payment method retrieved, ticket returned for signature series of steps, possibly including an optional return for the server to pick up the signed ticket prior to departure due to some back-of-house requirement.
I think you're simply not used to it. Meals are almost always paid at the table here in Canada. Basically, the bill comes out, server either has or will come back with the machine, enters cost, hands it to you. You tip on the machine, tap, done. For higher end stuff or groups you break the $100 tap limit, so it's insert and enter pin, but it's still quick.
The speed of it is quick, and it also gives a good chance for wrapping things up (can we get this packed, thank-yous, goodbyes if it's a bigger group, etc).
Of course, it may also help that we have chip-and-pin and tap pretty universally, so we rarely hand our card over to anyone - having the server take the card is incredibly strange for me when I'm down in the US.
As someone living in Canada, what surprised me when i went to the States for the first time was the restaurant's reluctance to split the bill individually, something we take it for granted in Canada.
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.
I suspect a lot of comfort with what happens with credit cards in the United States comes from people believing that their card issuer will simply handle the problem if any fraudulent or merely unauthorized charges appear. There's no risk from the card going out of sight if the card is useless because the card issuer will reverse charges upon request. (Moving to chips, even with signature, is supposed to alleviate the main source of fraud here, that being cloning the card.)
That said, I'm with you; I much prefer to have my card handled just once and within sight. It is faster, safer, and, to my mind, simply more convenient.
You are probably right, but that comfort comes at a price, and the price can be seen right there in the original article: 2.6% + 10 cent credit card payment overhead.
And that is considered "cheap"! By contrast, in the European Union there's a cap of 0.3% on credit card interchange rates and 0.2% on debit. Of course that's just the raw interchange fee; a small merchant has to pay more than that to its card processor, but there are all-inclusive, Square-like offers for debit card processing fees below 1% for small merchants, and larger ones manage to keep both debit and credit processing cost way below 1%.
So the "comfort" of being able to hand over your credit card to someone who takes it out of view and possibly does unauthorized stuff with it increases prices of all the stuff you buy by roughly 2-3%.
Is this actually the case though? Even if your card is taken by the staff and you don't see being charged, you are still being charged and some entity is processing the payment. I find it hard to believe that there are no fees just because terminal is stationary.
It's way more convenient. In the US, primarily, you either ask for the bill, you wait until they bring it, you give them your credit card, wait for them to charge it and bring back your card and the copy to sign, then you are free to leave.
In the EU, you ask for the bill, they bring you the bill and the credit card machine, and you are charged right there at the table, where you have to sign (because you have an US Credit Card after all)
Actually it's kind of funny when you visit remote places in Europe, and the proprietors are confused because this is the first time they've rang up a US Credit card, and the machine spits out a second receipt asking them to validate the signature.
It's embarrassing for Americans because they're squeamish. They have to leave a tip, and if the server is doing the payment right there, you have to actually face them when leaving your embarrassingly inadequate tip.
In the American model, payment is processed away from the customer and the bill is left for tip-adding after the server has left, to save the sensitibilities of cheap customers who tip badly.
Not a European expert by any means, but I've found that when you pay with CC there usually isn't a place to leave a tip. Tipping is done with spare change left on the table.
Also, I thought tipping itself isn't necessary, as many european countries have social programs to offset low wages.
Living in Germany: In most high-pricing restaurant situations I experience the person making the payment for the group would briefly before the last drinks are empty, approach the waiter/bar and make the payment away from the table. Also to avoid debates such as "let me pay, no let me pay, no you can't etc etc"
Mobile terminal doesn't prevent you from doing that. :-) That's what I do if I want to skip on the "no, lemme pay" banter. What I find curious though is that there are places in Germany where one can pay using plastic. ;-) It's always a complete PITA that most places I visit in Germany take cash exclusively.
Not limited to Japan.
Most places I've been to have you paying either before or after you eat from some form of counter. Depends what kind of place it is
Canada switched to that sort of system when chip+PIN was introduced many years ago, so the hardware is available in North America as well from major providers like Verifone. It's just that you need more terminals for concurrency with such a system, and it's not integrated into the full POS system so the waiter/clerk has to actually input the amount. Nobody wants to pay extra if they don't have to, which is why it's not as quick to rollout in the US. Chip+signature in the US still doesn't require the customer to interact with the payment terminal, so I doubt US restaurants and other businesses will be quick to switch to this or other handheld terminals.
This is what I’ve wanted to bring to the US from China. QR code on the table that lets you order and pay from your phone. It’s my favorite part of WeChat in China.
I prefer the privacy of the waiter going and coming back - there are a lot of social norms involved in "getting the check" and bringing the terminal to the table would really disrupt that, possibly for the better but who knows.
Imagine going out with some clients and getting "insufficient funds" notice what an embarrassment that would be...the waiter acts as a buffer or could in some cases get your attention.
But your definitely right from a security perspective and privacy this is much better...other than the insane fees they collect :)
What do I care if they skim my credit card? It’s not my money until I pay my bank. I can report a fraudulent transaction and request a new card right from my bank’s app.
They DO already in much of Europe. Every single restaurant in Norway operates this way. It's fantastic. You pay and go on your own time and you don't worry about your card getting skimmed. Nothing not to love.
At Chili's (an American chain restaurant) they have these payment devices on each table. I can't stand them. First, they take up space on the table that can get quite crowded with all the plates and glasses that tend to accumulate during the meal. Second, they play constant ads (great, now each table can have a TV! What a wonderful distraction). Third, I've experienced about a third of the time, the device isn't working properly, or breaks down partway through paying (my coworkers and I now treat the device as if it'll shatter if you so much as look at it wrong). And fourth, it seems to take longer to pay when the check is being split vs. the waitron [1] taking our cards and processing the payments given the verbose nature of the UI.
And finally, I don't know if a skimmer has been added to the device by previous customers. It is left on the table.
Or, if you don't want to sound like you are describing a robot using a term Merriam-Webster describes as “vaguely disparaging” [0], you could use the gender neutral term almost universally used in the industry, “server”.
Thanks. In South Africa "waitron" is standard, and I hate it, and most people from outside the country just have a "wut" reaction. "Server" is much better.
That's not what's proposed. This would be a terminal that is carried by the waiter to your table, not one per table like in Chilli's/Red Robin/Applebees.
I know Clover has a similar terminal that I've seen used in restaurants around Seattle, and if you go to a restaurant outside of the US, you'd likely see what's being proposed here.
Many places already have this in the US. They have longer range table side machines or cellular based. These have been around for years. Its up to the establishments to choose the terminal they want to use.
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.
On many Square instances, when you choose No Tip on the screen, tapping New Sale after it says Done! in the top right will clear the “no tip” indicator. If they go into the transaction history then it’ll show there still, but that takes an admin PIN and is annoying and so no one will.
(I tip, but that’s no excuse for someone else to suffer social pressure.)
That's not how tips in the US work. In the US, tips are simply shifting employer responsibility for their employees to the customer. If you are in the US, tip or avoid business that utilizing tipping.
This won't affect it because it's a merchant setting. What you can do though is complain to management and let them know. They can easily turn of tipping or lower the pre-set tip amounts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You’re right that employers must make up the difference by law, and I’m sure that many workers with tipped wages may take home more than their minimum wage equivalent, however that is not the norm, and the tipping wage has significantly worse outcomes than the standard minimum wage. Regardless, my point was that tipping cannot simply be boiled down to “I am being guilted into paying for a performance” and is significantly more nuanced for all involved.
In particular, point 5 from the linked summary makes a strong case that a significant portion of workers making the tipped minimum wage do not receive the difference from their employers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Doesn't it depend on the speed of Internet connection?
Here in Canada, chip terminals often show 'PIN OK' - meaning that the local part of the transaction has been completed - within 1 second but then need 10+ seconds to communicate back to the payment processor.
The average time to complete a scheme card transaction is sub 4 seconds on a lowish-latency network. Any extra time is due to the implementation on the merchant side.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Before that Square had a consumer payment solution (Square Wallet) using QR codes at Starbucks. It was supported at every starbucks location but never saw enough consumer adoption. They really tried, really. Really.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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... and filter on ‘touch screen, as entry technology. Populair name is pin-on-glass.
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!
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?
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.
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.
Instead, right now we get this madness, especially at a lot of smaller shops, where the clerk is using the merchant side box to enter the payment amount then fumbles around with the customer side pad to insert the card and complete the transaction for me.
Just let me tap or enter my PIN, please.
(I have two cards that are PIN primary. I've put stickers on both that read, in large letters, "THIS CARD USES A PIN PLEASE ALLOW ME TO ENTER IT." On one of them, it has, in smaller letters, "THE TRANSACTION WILL DECLINE IF YOU DON'T.")
The speed of it is quick, and it also gives a good chance for wrapping things up (can we get this packed, thank-yous, goodbyes if it's a bigger group, etc).
Of course, it may also help that we have chip-and-pin and tap pretty universally, so we rarely hand our card over to anyone - having the server take the card is incredibly strange for me when I'm down in the US.
That said, I'm with you; I much prefer to have my card handled just once and within sight. It is faster, safer, and, to my mind, simply more convenient.
And that is considered "cheap"! By contrast, in the European Union there's a cap of 0.3% on credit card interchange rates and 0.2% on debit. Of course that's just the raw interchange fee; a small merchant has to pay more than that to its card processor, but there are all-inclusive, Square-like offers for debit card processing fees below 1% for small merchants, and larger ones manage to keep both debit and credit processing cost way below 1%.
So the "comfort" of being able to hand over your credit card to someone who takes it out of view and possibly does unauthorized stuff with it increases prices of all the stuff you buy by roughly 2-3%.
In the EU, you ask for the bill, they bring you the bill and the credit card machine, and you are charged right there at the table, where you have to sign (because you have an US Credit Card after all)
Actually it's kind of funny when you visit remote places in Europe, and the proprietors are confused because this is the first time they've rang up a US Credit card, and the machine spits out a second receipt asking them to validate the signature.
In the American model, payment is processed away from the customer and the bill is left for tip-adding after the server has left, to save the sensitibilities of cheap customers who tip badly.
Also, I thought tipping itself isn't necessary, as many european countries have social programs to offset low wages.
Imagine going out with some clients and getting "insufficient funds" notice what an embarrassment that would be...the waiter acts as a buffer or could in some cases get your attention.
But your definitely right from a security perspective and privacy this is much better...other than the insane fees they collect :)
I don't. I creates an opportunity for credit card skimming.
And finally, I don't know if a skimmer has been added to the device by previous customers. It is left on the table.
[1] General neutral term for waiter/waitress.
Or, if you don't want to sound like you are describing a robot using a term Merriam-Webster describes as “vaguely disparaging” [0], you could use the gender neutral term almost universally used in the industry, “server”.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/waitron
I know Clover has a similar terminal that I've seen used in restaurants around Seattle, and if you go to a restaurant outside of the US, you'd likely see what's being proposed here.
https://merchantservices.chase.com/payment-solutions
(I tip, but that’s no excuse for someone else to suffer social pressure.)
Tipping isn't bribery. If your barista is making your coffee differently based on a tip, they're a bad barista.
So the advertised cost would actually be the honest that you would pay for the product. What a horrible world that would be!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage
Summary of relevant research: https://www.epi.org/blog/seven-facts-about-tipped-workers-an...
In particular, point 5 from the linked summary makes a strong case that a significant portion of workers making the tipped minimum wage do not receive the difference from their employers.
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.
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).
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.
That could be because I'm using a cellular internet conneciton however. My town's cable internet is notoriously throttled.
Here in Canada, chip terminals often show 'PIN OK' - meaning that the local part of the transaction has been completed - within 1 second but then need 10+ seconds to communicate back to the payment processor.
https://squareup.com/us/en/press/square-makes-payments-even-...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.