Opinions on Square, etc. Credit card reader services for smart phone
 

I've been using the Square on my iphone to take customers credit cards as payment for about two months now. It's been working great. I like the fact that the fees come out of the deposit, fees are competitive, and it allows me to take Amex cards without me having to pay the Amex fees to do so. I have a few questions though... these type of readers allow a person to swipe their own card and have money deposited into their own account, circumventing the card issuers cash advance fees. And I'm sure Amex isn't happy to be losing money. I still have my old card reader and the monthly fees that go with it. I would like to dump it but am worried that the phone style card readers will be forced to go away. Unwarranted worry?

really liking it in my business(restaurant) so far. We use it on an ipad. Only problem we had was getting around the 25% tip max:). Don't think it would would bode well for the banks to try and do something about it in current political climate, dunno. Have had a couple customers not like it, felt weird to them signing the ipad screen. We have it set up to e-mail the customers receipt immediately after processing

I think they're great; the only reason we keep our old-style wireless machine around is because the square-type devices won't work at all if you don't have a cell signal. Our old machine will work in 'offline' mode and you can process the whole batch when you get somewhere that has good signal.

Can you manually input a card with square? That is a valuable tool available to conventional card readers.

Read up here:

https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/4957-what-are-square-s-fees

If you type in the card information manually, our fee is 3.5% + 15¢.

yes but there is a $ limit... https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/3869-accepting-payments-with-square-register

I was able to get my card absent limit raised to an agreeable amount by filling out a form on the site. I was worried that as an auto repair business that stock limit would cause issues. I agree they are an awesome tool and I've had no negative feedback. Only dealing with 2-3 people a day though. Good point on the cell coverage. Haven't had that happen here yet.