Ask a Payments Product Manager Anything

[Tom]

Hello Sellers! On July 8th at 11am PT / 2pm ET, we hosted a virtual office hours opportunity where sellers posted questions to this thread and heard back from our Payments team!

@Sean is a product manager on the Payment Products team at Square, and he took the lead in this session. Having worked on the Seller Community team as a community manager previously and with more than 7 years of experience at Square, he's always excited to hear from sellers and ensure that their experiences are taken into account with product decisions.

Click here to learn more about Square Payments.

A few example questions:

• How can I offer a seamless payment experience to my customers?
• How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact Square payment products and services?
• How does Square's referral program work and how do I track my free processing balance?

Note on account-specific questions: For your privacy and security, we are not able to address issues related to specific payments, deposits, or account status details in our public forums. If you need assistance on one of those related topics, please contact our Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive into your account.

[Sean]

Hey @barbergrl and thanks for the question! It sounds like you might already be aware of similar features that we have, like no-show protection and require full prepayment, but I’m guessing you’d like to charge something in-between full price ahead of providing the service since it’s likely time consuming and costly for you? I know my barber just uses no show protection for now, but my haircuts are normally pretty straightforward and cheap! 🙂

[DBD2021]

Am I able to upload my own contract instead of creating one with the provided templates?

[Sean]

Hi @DBD2021! While we don’t currently allow folks to attach their own contracts, as you mentioned, you can set up a new custom template for contracts online. Is there a feature missing in our templates that you’d like to see? Would love to understand your workflow more! Alternatively too, you can add an attachment to a standard invoice if you’re using that product too.

[TEE2]

hello, I am a single user business. when a client books an appointment and wants to make a partial payment in advance, how can that happen?

[Sean]

Hi @TEE2! @barbergrl had a similar question, so it sounds like this is a popular feature request. I’ll definitely pass it along to our Square Appointments Team! As for your options now, you can enable no-show protection or require full prepayment.

[LoyceSaylor]

Tom,

I tested my first charge to one of my credit cards.  The pending charge show the Arts and Crafts but it says the type of business is a Whiskey business?  Where do I go to change the type of business.  LOL

Also, the pending charge to the card ($50. )seems ok but the depositing account only show the $1 in and out to check the opening account,  I don't see a pending on the deposit side. 

Thanks!

Loyce Saylor

[redacted by Moderator]

[Sean]

Hi @LoyceSaylor, and sorry to hear about the issue! Generally speaking, the information that is shown on a receipt reflects what you have filled out in the receipts settings. If your business has multiple locations, you’ll need to be sure and update each of them using the selector above the receipt rendering. The only other thing that could possibly influence this is what your business’s merchant category code is set to. While this isn’t something that you can update yourself, if you give us a call, we can make sure it fits your business well.

As for transferring the funds from your Square balance to your connected bank account, I have a few tips:

• If you’re new to Square, the process of verifying your bank can take up to 4 business days. While you can take payments ahead of the verification process, any payments you accept will remain in your Square balance until the bank verification process is complete.
• Any transfer taken after 5 p.m. won’t be sent until the following day. More detail here.
  
• If you’d like instant access to your Square balance on a free MasterCard debit card, you might consider getting a Square Card.

Hope this helps!

[gyb]

Can you explain what the fees are if any for disputed transactions and how they should be addressed? Is there anything we can do to add extra security to prevent this or tips to fight back?

[Sean]

Hi @gyb! Happy to help out with this one. I know the dispute process is often confusing and frustrating! As you mentioned, your customers can initiate a payment dispute or chargeback by asking their bank to reverse a charge. When this happens, we place a hold on the disputed funds in your Square account until the dispute gets cleared up. This is because the customer’s bank has just taken the funds from us, and we need to cover that amount. We don’t charge any extra fees. If there aren’t enough funds available in your Square account, we’ll have to debit your linked bank account to cover the disputed amount. Square doesn’t decide who wins or loses a dispute—that’s up to the bank that issued your customer’s credit card (like Visa or MasterCard).

Our Disputes Resolution Team does make your case to your customer’s bank. As for advice, the number one thing you can do is to make sure and provide us with as much detail as possible when we reach out to you when the dispute is initiated. Any supporting evidence you may have about the transaction, like receipts, invoices, email correspondence, proof of delivery or photos will improve the strength of your case. The more evidence you can provide, the better chance you have of winning the dispute. We also provide free contracts, which can definitely be a strong piece of evidence if a disagreement should arise. Hope this helps!

[boundlessnc]

Love use Square Payments, especially for my clients who use our invoices. They can walk in, I can use my terminal to pay the square invoice. -- I just wish invoices supported partial amounts, say 500 business cards at .0453 -- Square just rounds up to .05 which changes price drastically. 

[Sean]

Hi @boundlessnc. Love to hear you’ve been having a good experience with Square so far! As for you question, with our fractional quantity feature, you should be able to set the item count up to the hundred-thousandths place (.00000). You may need to create a Custom Unit. Learn more here.

[boundlessnc]

@SeanItem count can up to the hundred-thousandths place, but the PRICE field is limited to whole cents (.00). I need an item to cost .065 (6 and half cents)

Quickbooks invoices allow this.... only thing preventing me from moving. 

[Sean]

@boundlessnc Thanks so much for the clarification - that's really helpful! I'll pass on the feedback to the team that works on that feature! 

[thegrovecg]

When will GST be calculated on online website payments? 

Also it would be amazing to hold credits for customers against future orders, currently I can only offer refunds even if the customer requests a credit. 

[Sean]

Hi @thegrovecg. Thanks for the questions! For your first one, this is definitely a popular feature request we’ve heard, and it’s definitely picked up a lot of traction in the seller community. I would suggest following this thread for future updates. I’ll flag to our eCommerce Team again!

For your second question, this is also a request we’ve heard from sellers too. While I can’t offer a timeline for it at this point, it’s definitely on our radar. As a workaround, you could refund a payment to an eGift Card that can be used at your business. The customer can also store it on file, so they just need to give you their name to use it in the future. Appreciate the questions!

[homeprogreen]

The pandemic has really brought to the forefront a drawback to me using Square for my business. Since I sell age restricted products Square’s TOS limits me to only doing Face to Face card present transactions which is fine. I get the fact that’s done to ensure that businesses like mine have the opportunity to check ID’s before processing the transaction. But during the pandemic we hit restrictions of only being able to do curbside delivery. It would be very helpful if businesses like mine were allowed to setup the online store so it would allow customers to order products for curbside or local delivery. Wouldn’t even have to have payment enabled on the online store. Just the catalog of products and the order creation. That way ID is still checked and card is still present for the actual sale

[Sean]

Hi @homeprogreen, and thanks for sharing the feedback. I can only imagine how tough it’s been for business owners during the pandemic. We recently unlocked the ability for businesses to sell alcohol online, so we’re definitely working towards expanding the types of products we can support online and for delivery. I’m happy to flag what you’d like to see us unlock if you can share a little bit more! Thank you!

[homeprogreen]

I own a vape shop so the products are considered tobacco. Honestly don’t want to sell online. What I definitely do need is the ability to show the products in the online store so the customers can select their products, have the order show up in my dashboard for local pickup, customer lets me know when they’ve arrived so I can walk out and finish the transaction face to face card present

[Sean]

Appreciate the follow up. I'll be sure to flag this request to eCommerce Team. Hope things are starting to return to normal again! 🙏

[ELIZABETHT]

Hi Tom,

• Why isn’t it possible to pay an invoice from “card on file’? 
• will there be an opportunity for clients to be able to manage their method of payment (such as PayPal) so it’s easier to make regular paymemts
• could the signing of a consent form for card on file all be done in the square platform which would be more secure.
• I didn’t bother with testing with better formatting in invoices as there was no indication as to whether or not it would be permanent (time is limited as it is).  Will there be better formatting, and could there be the option of having more than one template?

thanks very much

Elizabeth

[Sean]

Hi @ELIZABETHT! Appreciate the questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them! As for your first question, if you use the Square Invoice App, you should be able to use a Card on File to make a payment towards an invoice.

For your second request, I agree we should make it easier for customers to manage the card they have on file. We did launch this improvement with Square Appointments already. How are you using Card on File primarily? Would love to learn more about your use case!

As for the consent, I also agree that this experience would be much better if there was a digital form, instead of printing out and filling out. I’ll resurface this feedback!

For your question around invoice templates, we did launch the ability to create and save invoice templates. Were there specific types of customizations you’d like to see? I’m happy to pass the feedback along to the Invoices Team!