Against my better judgement, I am going to attempt to answer this one. Only because I think some of the hardcore advisores are going to chew you up and spit you out.
From my experience;
1st Rule: When ever you try to think outside of the box and use your square in an unconventional way. It usually backfires.
2nd Rule: I am extremely stubborn and rarely do I take the first advise I receive.
I think you may be mixing a couple of system together in an attempt to get un unconventional outcome. That does not mean it cannot be done, I just have to understand what and why you are trying to do this.
1. Safari to a square link use a chip reader will not work.
2. Safari to your self-programed site with a hyperlink to your square store will work, but it will divert you or your client and it will have to be manually inputed which will cost you more money in processing. [no brainer there]
I have a few questions before I can give you a final answer. There is still hope but very little that you can do this.
Q 1: Why are you trying to do this?
Q 2: Is your client accessing your personally programed site with a link to square to process the final purchase? If so this is OK and it will work -- NO Card Reader only manual input and it makes no sense unless the client is not present.
Q 3: If the client is in front of you and you are personally closing out with the client.... I am back to Q 1: Why?
It is much easier to use the square app to process payments face to face with your clients. I understand there are advantages of programing your own bells and whisles rather than paying a third party approved programer to do something you can obviously do yourself. Unfortunately that cuts into Squares profits from those third party venders and they are not going to make that easy for you to make this happen.
Best Practice:
1. If the client is in front of you use the square program as designed.
2. If they are cuducting the transaction on your website without you present, yes you can add the final hyperlink to the square checkout, however, you must creat a store whether you use it or not.
When square first came out they had a great program that gave you a URL on your iPad when you created an item. You simply copied and pasted the url into a program. Those days are over, they found out there was too much money turning this feature off and requireing you to pay more for a third-party aproved vender.
Conclusion: Considering all the above, NO -- you cannot "use a card reader on iPad through safari".
If I am wrong about my assumption of your set-up, then let me know. I am pretty sure I can confidently say -- been-there, done-that and it does not work. But you never know, I have been wrong before.
