Grow your business: Ask us anything about subscriptions and recurring payments!

[Tom]

👋  Hello Sellers! We were thrilled to have our Subscriptions team drop in for a Q&A on Wednesday, September 1st at noon PT / 3pm ET!

We recently launched a set of subscription features that unlock the ability to create subscription plans and accept recurring payments with your customers. As we will continue to iterate after this initial launch, our product team wants to hear directly from you.

With that, it was exciting to introduce you to @JenLax, who has been leading the charge with this new set of features. She and her team were eager to hear your thoughts on everything ranging from initial setup—to what you'd like to see more of in the future.

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 topics, please contact our Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive into your account.

[HC_Charlie]

Hello @Tom and thanks for focusing on this topic! I don't know much about creating a subscription plan, but I've been curious for some time now. A lot of businesses are offering these and I have thought about trying to start something for my own business; perhaps a themed gift box-of-the-month or something like that. I'm looking forward to this Q&A because even though I don't have experience with it yet, I think reading other's questions will help me get motivated to think about this and start developing, marketing, and eventually SELLING it through Square.

I think my first question would be how my customers would signup and then be able to manage their plan. Is there a website or portal, or something special I would have to have coded on my Weebly/Square online site to help administer a subscription service? And is this something that could also be managed in-store right from my Square Register if I'm talking to a customer face-to-face?

[jean_sq]

There are a few different ways to allow customers to sign up for a subscription plan. You can create shareable checkout links through Square Online Checkout or by setting up a subscription plan and toggling “Subscribe Online” (which will generate the shareable link). You can then share these links via email, SMS or social media. You can also generate buy button code that you can embed on a website. You are able to manage your subscriptions through Square dashboard.

Subscribers are able to cancel their subscription or change their payment method by clicking on links contained in the initial email they receive after subscribing. 

Currently we do not have subscriptions integrated directly into Square Online or Point of Sale. We hope to have both of those integrations either by the end of 2021 or early 2022.

[danindixie]

I'd love it if ACH could be used on recurring payments / payment benchmarks. (My customers get an invoice for $3600 with a $300 payment due on the first of each month, for 12 months.) Right now, their only option for setting up a recurring payment source is a card, and it would save me a lot of money if it could be an ACH.

[jean_sq]

Paying for a subscription via ACH is not currently available. We hope to have that available in early 2022.

[VanKalkerFarms]

That's awesome to hear.

[boundlessnc]

so I currently have a customer paying for a subscription via ACH? How does this work?

[jean_sq]

Paying for a subscription via ACH is not currently available, but we hope to have that available in early 2022. A recurring invoice (which has some similarities to a subscription but is different) can be paid using ACH. Does this answer your question?

[michaelfied]

Hi Jean, 

As of 10-21-2021 Square does offer the option for customers to pay recurring invoices (subscription billing) via ACH. We have a couple of customers who use it and it works great the biggest disadvantage is the timeframe it takes for the payment to clear after the billing date.  For example; if the billing date is on 10-21 it will typically take 3-4 days for the payment to reflect in your square balance. 

[kidzartpbc]

Will I be able to make edits to a subscription without canceling the entire subscription? I often have customers who want to pause their subscription for a month or 2. 

[jean_sq]

We will be adding pause/resume capability to subscriptions later this year! It is not currently available.

[babygreensfarm]

It would be extremely helpful if the customer and/or business can adjust what products the customer receives in their subscription. My customers like to change what is in their order on a fairly regular basis. As it is right now it ruins the subscription process and frustrates them and us as a business.

[jean_sq]

Hi! Thanks for the feedback! Good news is that giving sellers flexibility in offering subscription boxes that have items changing based on buyer or seller preferences or seasonal specials is being planned for the subscriptions product in 2022.

[kidzartpbc]

It would also be very helpful if you created the ability to set payment dates (instead of customers being billed each month on the same date). Or the ability to set custom payment amounts for different months. We offer art classes that parents pay for monthly. But for some months, like December, we arent able to offer class each of the 4 weeks due to the holidays. Currently customers pay a full amount in Nov & the same amount in Dec even though in Dec they don't get the same # of classes. Then we have to go in and refund and its quite tedious..

[jean_sq]

When you first add a subscriber to an existing subscription plan, you have the option to set a custom price and custom start date. Currently the billing date is tied to the start date. We plan to support custom billing dates by the end of this year (2021).

[sundayskin]

Would love for subscriptions to also be able to earn loyalty points.  We have a membership and want each person to earn points for their membership/subscription.  Would also love to be able to set the day they'd like the payment to start, instead of the day they sign up. 

[jean_sq]

At this time, subscriptions do not integrate with Loyalty. We hope to have that integration next year. With regards to custom billing dates, we plan to have that feature by the end of this year (2021).

[Canna_Onia]

Hi Tom,  What about using subscriptions on websites on a Wix platform?  Wix says that Square is not set up with them for subscriptions.  Do you know if this will change?  Thank you.

[jean_sq]

You can create shareable subscription links through Square Online Checkout. Additionally, there is an option under Square Online Checkout where you can “Add button to website” which will generate code that you should be able to embed on any website platform (as long as it that allows you to embed custom code).

[cecesonline]

I would like to know how much it will cost a small business owner to set up the recurring payment for their customers? 

[jean_sq]

You would pay 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction on each subscription, regardless of whether the card is present or not present. There are also no monthly fees.