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.

[jewelcam]

HI i have the Square Register and use Square for Retail

1. I have setting the Team members in the Dashboard under their Team passcode not to be able to access the Settings area on the Register but that is still accessible to them?

2.When i set for the DEVICE to time out after 30 sec. it times out while an active Team member is inserting data, it should either wait until there is 30 sec of no activity then log them out or do a auto-logout after each sale. 

3. The customer display background images need to have the ability to rotate. 

[Steak1]

Will barcodes be available to print on the bottom of customer tickets---specifically for restaurant use? This will allow us to quickly scan and recall the ticket for payout at the front register.

[PerroneTech]

1. Will you be releasing a USB C card reader? In 2021 you will find phones not equipped with headphone jacks any longer. I would LOVE to just use the chip reader, but sometimes you get ones that need to be swiped.

2. When will the Square Register be seeing a hardware refresh? I'm not sure if it already has a web browser, but if it did, that would help me a lot, I could just replace my point of sales computer completely if it did as I still need a web browser to create my service tickets in Repairshopr.

3. I'd like to see Square put onto the Windows app store. This way we could perhaps use our own hardware solutions.

[hanswang]

1. This is a great suggestion! If you have a phone with a USB-C port, we recommend a USB-C to headphone jack or USB-C to lightning adapter when using the reader for magswipe.
2. We’re always thinking about how to improve our hardware. Other than a web browser, what else are you looking for in the next generation Register?

[uniqueboutique]

Can you make your products so they can run on Windows Systems instead of Apple?

[lookchem]

Yes

[ocp]

Your chip reader should be free, or the price should be significantly reduced. 

Fraudulent "EMV liability shift" chargebacks from using your card swipers are killing my business!

[VanKalkerFarms]

I'm sorry, but $49 is a steal for a wireless chip reader.  Before square came and disrupted the industry we were paying $500 for used card terminals and $1,000+ for new card swipe terminals.  They were slow and needed dedicated telephone lines.  It would pay for itself if you are getting chargebacks.  EMV liability shift isn't a Square thing it is a Credit card industry thing.  You should not be swiping cards anymore in 2021 unless the chip fails 3 times (you are still covered because you tried to chip read) or the card does not have a chip.  a few more years and magnetic stripes won't even be on cards anymore.

There is no reason the chip reader should be free just as there is no reason your business should have to give away products for free.

[ocp]

Hey while you're at it, why don't you tell Square to raise their credit card transaction fees and their payroll processing fees, because "you know, back in the day I had to hire a dedicated accountant at $1.35 an hour to calculate payroll using an abacus, and that added up to way more than I'm paying now, so this is a bargain!" 🙄

---

@VanKalkerFarms wrote:

...there is no reason your business should have to give away products for free.

---

Oh man I'm an idiot, I had no idea I'm dealing with the next Jeff Bezos here. 

Freemium Business Model 

[Indymichael]

Allow the wireless and chip icon animations at the “entering name” stage.   It gives no indicator to the customer unless we type in their name first.  However, we ask them to go ahead and stick in the chip, so it will populate the name correctly.  It is more efficient and accurate that way.  But it kinda sucks that we have to direct them manually, rather than the screen showing them the chip animation or the wireless icon lit up to guide them.  
(This is on Square Register)

[ChristinainHW]

Indymichael - Great suggestion and we’re taking note! This will help make the most of the dedicated display for your customers on Square Register.

[Candlestore]

1) How about developing a display screen for customers to see and sign on when required for the Ipad stand that is similar to the one with Register? 

2) Let users create Sub Categories for the Categories in Square for Retail.... not just for online stores.

3) Let users insert images for Categories and  sub categories if you make these not just Items.

Now your team will ask why these have been requested in the past and why they are being requested now.  Well some of these have been feature requests since 2016 or 2017 and seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

The customer facing display screen would be great as an add on.  Why, well if this was not such a good idea why is there one with register?

Subcategories would be great for finding things on an app since every place I know of has different sizes colors or styles of items in retail and would make it easy to find if there is no barcode on said item.

Category Images would be great since I have 8 oz candles, 8 inch tappers, 8 inch formals, 8 inch candle holders, and for item category it shows 8 o, or 8 i.  but with an image I could see or put a clear picture in that defines the difference.   This does not even get into trying to define the candles by color options for the size or scents.  

basically i could have :

Category -

     Jar Candles -

          sub categories - 8oz, 16oz, 28 oz, 64 oz, 70 oz, 128 oz etc 

     Pillar Candles-

           sub categories - 2x3, 2x6, 3x3, 3x6, 3x9, 4x4, 4x6, 4x9, 6x6 6x9

     Votive Candles -

            subcategories- scented, unscented

This did not even get in to types of Tappers - Formals, Regular and Hand dipped and their lengths.

[dasap1234]

Sub Cat's would be amazing!

[GetGreg]

Offering a customer facing display that could be used with Square Stand is our minds too. Can you tell us more about how you would expect to use this or how it would improve your business? Also, if you have any comments on why Square Register might not work for you please let us know.

If you’re interested in using Square Terminal as a customer facing display with your computer. Check out Square Virtual Terminal.

Thanks for the feedback about categories and subcategories, and category images. We’ll pass that feedback on to the right team.

[DiscCrazy]

Set up the remote vending so we can use a UPC scanner that attaches to a smart phone or ipad for remote sales vending would be helpful.  The ipad scans, and the phone scans, but they are clunky and hard to manage for multiple items.  We do remote vending at tournaments, and would love to be able to use a handheld scanner.  Thanks!

[ChristinainHW]

Hey DiscCrazy - thanks for the idea! Would love to learn more about how you’d ideally like your hardware set up. Do you mean connecting to your smart phone/iPad over bluetooth or having some all-in-one hardware that also includes a barcode scanner? 

If you’re interested in potential barcode scanners that pair with Square, check out this bluetooth barcode scanner.

If you’re looking for all-in-one hardware, what would you want to see in the Square hardware, in addition to a built-in scanner?

[cstocker]

Please Please Please Show TABLE NUMBERS on the Orders screen, instead of just Delivery vs Pickup.

[CountryDriven]

Good Saturday morning,

We have our very first huge trade show even next weekend and I have a few questions.

I bought the small iphone square to take payments on my phone and I bought the contactless/chip reader equipment but I don't have a cash register or anything fancy. 

1-Can I plug the contactless card reader in to my regular laptop?

2-If so, do I need to be on a particular website (for this and my iphone) when someone swipes their card?

ANY help on how I get started will be great!

Thank you in advance1

Angel

[personal information redacted]

[hanswang]

Hi Angel @CountryDriven, congratulations on becoming a Square seller! You do not need a cash register or anything fancy to use the contactless and chip Reader. All you need is to download the Square app on your mobile or tablet device and then connect your Reader to your phone via Bluetooth. I recommend reading through the Getting Started Guide, which is the small paper pamphlet that should have come with the Reader. If you can’t find it, no worries! We also have directions online at https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5639-set-up-the-square-reader-for-contactless-and-chip

Best of luck with your trade show and congratulations again!

[JJS1]

Feature I would love for Square to integrate into their hardware is the ability to accept EBT payments.

I've seen several others suggest, and I agree, I would love to be able to use my desktop computer to save tickets. We have a Square stand, handheld, and two iPhones we use around our store, but we take a lot of phone orders in our back office, and being able to to take orders to save to a ticket for when they want to come in to pay and pick up would be great. Someone even suggested a barcode added to the bottom of a receipt to scan and recall a ticket for payout, I'm not in the restaurant business but would great to be use from our back office to our front store register.

When using the Square app on the iPhone, it would be great for the square app to access the camera to use as a barcode scanner.