Meet Our Square Hardware Team: How can we improve Square's payment products?

[Tom]

On August 19th at 11am PT / 2pm ET, our Square Hardware team hosted a virtual office hours session on this thread!

This time around, we asked you to dream big — if you could design any piece of hardware for accepting payments:

• What features would your ideal point of sale include?
• What would your ideal point of sale look like?
• What products do you wish Square made?
• Thinking about existing Square hardware, what would the most important enhancements be?
  

Our hosts were @ChristinainHW, @nika_sq, @Rowan, @hanswang, @GetGreg, and @nsnow. Altogether, they have ten years of experience working on Square products and they're excited to answer questions, learn about your business needs, and make sure your insights are included with the development process.

We responded to as many replies as we could on Thursday, August 19th. Looking ahead, we will summarize your questions and responses about your ideal hardware experience in a follow-up post. And, of course, we will incorporate all of your feedback as we continue to improve the payment experience!

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

[#2]

Update:

Thank you to everyone who asked questions! We're grateful for the wide variety of real world insights and feedback.

I'm checking in at the end of the hour to let you know that the time to post new questions has closed, and our Hardware team members will continue to follow up on as many questions as they can over the next few days.

We also noticed a lot of questions related to software—which makes sense—there's a lot of overlap between hardware and software. Rest assured that we'll review everything you shared and surface your experiences with the appropriate teams.

Thank you for your patience and keep watch for updates.

[PerroneTech]

Check out Bosstab | Tablet Stands, Holders & Wall Mounts, they have excellent options. I got the Touch holder with the Nexus swivel base. It swivels 180 degrees and has a soft lock at each position. It really shows off the tablet you are using as well. I love it. It's universal so you can use it with anything. They even have added a clamp holder now and the Nexus has a freestanding base so you don't have to mount it to your table. 

[Velynee]

Hello, I have the square stand and chip card reader set I purchased about 4 to 5 months ago, for some reason the reader is not charging, I have to manually charge it. Has anyone else had this problem? What do you think I should try to fix the issue?

[hanswang]

Sorry to hear that - could you elaborate on what you mean by needing to manually charge the Reader?

[tablerockmobile]

I would like a wireless Square chip/contactless card reader with a longer battery or a better way for the current one to go to sleep. The batteries only last 2-3 days before needing a charge. Other contactless readers I've used from Vitals POS/TSYS lasted weeks on a single charge. 

[hanswang]

Thank you for the feedback. Battery performance is something we are constantly working on and continuing to improve. Curious if your business is mobile? If it’s primarily stationary, I’d recommend getting the Square dock to constantly charge the Reader.

[tablerockmobile]

Hi hanswang, 

Yes we are 100% mobile. There are 5 employees each with a reader. We go into people's homes throughout the day. That is why battery performance is key and they don't like having to recharge their readers every 1-2 days.

[dawn219]

A couple things that come to mind as far as Square Terminal & the app goes: ( love both btw)

-There is a double-tap zoom feature on the terminal that I would not be the least bit sad about if it happened to disappear.

-Having a couple choices of checkout menu layouts would be awesome. Current layout & recent updated layout work very well for one of my side of my business but is kind of cumbersome for the other. The drop down menus make for a lot of scrolling (sometimes up & down in a hurry) when there are a lot of options. I would love to utilize something with sub-menus that functions with buttons and a screen switch rather than a list drop downs. When a selection is made on one sub-menu, the option to accept and proceed to the next could become available and sort of guide the user through adding variations or add-ons. 

-It would be helpful for administrators to be able to view active log ins directly on the terminal, rather than exiting to view on dashboard.

-The swipe reader seems a little...loose(?) compared to card readers I have used in the past.  As little as swipe is used anymore, it has kind of become the 'old reliable' method like dinosaur card imprints used to be.  It just seems like it should be built of a quality that allows it to function as such. 

-I imagine something is in process with it, but I am looking forward to the ability to accept bitcoin payments directly one day.  I am hoping that option will include a market price ticker (like Cash App has)  that would automatically record current value at the time of a sale for whatever the tax rules may be at that time...on that note maybe also integrate a lens for QR scanning? 

-5G & mobile data in general is sometimes in & out around here and local internet providers experience outages frequently.  An  offline customer database for invoicing would eliminate most of my self-imposed headaches.  

-Love the terminal all around though 🙂

[GetGreg]

Thanks for so many ideas and feedback dawn219!

And thanks for the kind words about Terminal. We’ll pass along your feedback on the zoom feature, check out flows, activity logs, and Bitcoin payments.

Regarding the swipe slot it should not be so loose that it affects the reliability of cards being swiped. If you think it does let us know!

Mobile data is a popular request and we continue to investigate the best way to bring a solution like that to our sellers. We do have many sellers using mobile hotspots, or cellular connected iPads as a current solution.

How would you want to use mobile data integrated into Square Terminal? Would it be as a backup when your wi-fi isn’t working, or would you use it as the primary internet connection?

[RSA48]

I have the dock and the Square Reader. We use our phones to take payment. Why if husband connects to the device, does it take so long for it to connect to my phone. Average 5 - 10 minutes to get phone to reconnect. Hubby has to disconnect completely before I can connect. Why can't you have more than one device access the device?

[PerroneTech]

Being able to connect wouldn't work for various reasons:

- Only with Bluetooth 5 was multiple device connect introduced, and I assume the reader does not use BT5.
- How would the device know which POS to transmit to for the transaction?
- Security... can you imagine someone who knows how to pair the device comes in and just pairs up? They could potentially snipe your sales by putting their own. I mean this is a problem already as it exists, but still, it would probably be worse if it connected to multiple devices. All a person would have to do is be nearby, see/hear what you are charging, enter that as a sale, and just the sale for their own. That's why I love having mine in the holder. No access to the button.

[hanswang]

Thank you @PerroneTech for helping to answer this question! The reasoning for the requirement of only being able to have one device connected to a Reader does come down to security and determining which POS to listen to.

[ElPubRestaurant]

I would like the option for employees to use swipe/tap cards instead of passcodes. 

Too easy for wandering eyes to read a manager inputting their code & simply too easy to share a code between employees as well.

I think programmable nfc cards to use with the card reader would be perfect

[Rowan]

Thanks for the feedback! This is not the first time we’ve heard the request for easier employee login leveraging the readers on our hardware. Our team is actively looking into this use case and we hope to share more updates in the future.

[SweetAvenue]

-Faster interface on Square register.

-Ability for Square Register to sync with the bluetooth chip reader, in case of an issue with the customer display (has happened multiple times). 

-Ability to change customer's orders through Square Online. 

[jcgjupiter]

Hi,

   We use Square register and we love it. We have 3 thermal printers, 1 kitchen printer, 1 star ethernet sticky label printer with the 80mm maxstick paper. Our biggest dream and wish is that there was settings in the square register software to allow for use of the 58mm sticky media paper in the star ethernet sticky label printer. I have tried the Iconex 58mm sticky media Fulltack paper in the printer and it works great. Just need the settings in square register to make font,etc a little smaller and a litlle to the right positioning. Right now the staff does not like the huge order tickets on the bubble tea cups.  Covers almost half of the PET cups.

V/R

Bangkok Street Fare

Monrudee 

[RyRyRy]

We would love for the terminal to be able to assign tickets to tables so servers can use it as a handheld payment device for people that are also leaving tabs open while they dine/drink/shop. Having the terminal be able to print via wifi/bluetooth or talk to KDS would be a huge boon!

[GourmetOnWheels]

We would need that soon as well!

For a new business, we are starting

René

[GetGreg]

Thanks for the feedback. If you use Square for Restaurants there are some integrations with Square Terminal that might give you the features you’re looking for.

Check out these article to learn more:

Use Square for Restaurants on Your Square Terminal

Manage Orders on Square Terminal

[thaithaibishop]

To bluetooth print kitchen tickets using 2 different POS stations when the printer can only be linked to one POS

[thaithaibishop]

whether I have one location or 2 locations under my business/login why are they treated differently? even for these community support chats, I have to choose one of my locations that are " (authorized) " yet I can only use one the authorized locations under my username. It all apart of my account and there for should be treated as one and idividually.

[Grocerystore]

Since I run a Grocery Store. I am looking for a POS that has good support for scales, scanners, printers. Along with POS views that can change based on the location they are within the store. Such as meat counters, rear online delivery, checkout, self checkout. The current quick item selection on the square pos is good. Options to add keyboards. And large catalog support would be nice.
I wish Square Made was a native printer. A stronger more powerful version of the register. The current registers processing unit is far behind in current technology standards. Good support for the new Ipad pros. Faster product launches. And wider option of accessories.