Questions about Square Gift Cards Repricing (1/31/24)

[skateman81]

The title of this thread has been edited by a Square Moderator from the original: "Gift Card Load fees?!"

So let me get this straight.  Square now wants to charge a 2.5% fee for loading gift cards, on top of the card processing fee if they use a card to pay with it?  So if someone buys one of my cards and puts $50 on it, pays with a credit/debit card, I have to $5 in fees??  I lose $5 plus the cost of the card.  Is this correct?  If it is, then I might just have to leave square.  I set up a reloadable loyalty card for my customers to pay with to get discounts and now new fee is a big bag over the head and punch in the face to my business.  I thought you were supposed to be helping businesses.  Not screwing them out of even more money!

 

[#2]

Hi @Lovewell , it is true that the 2.5% load fee will apply to both physical and eGift Cards, as they have much of the same functionality and benefits like driving overspend on the balance, customer acquisition, integrated reporting, etc.  

I just wanted to try and clarify one thing. In the example you gave of selling small denomination gift cards at Christmas as gifts for teachers, you mentioned that the sales don't count until the gift card is used, however you are deposited the funds that you received from when the card was originally loaded/bought right away (according to your deposit schedule). Even if the teachers never come back to redeem the cards, you did still make a profit from the sale of the card. 

[#3]

Hi again @dsachs - Looking at your Seller Community profile, I can see you have posted a total of 6 times. All 6 of your posts are still linked to this thread.

The 2.5% gift card load fee will not apply to refunds or store credit issued to Square Gift Cards.

[#4]

Regarding passing the fees onto the customer, every country and state has their own laws on how to enact surcharges. You must make sure you understand local laws before ever passing on any type of transaction or processing fee to a customer. 

[#5]

Hi there @skateman81 and @Jenthom08 - Thank you for sharing your feedback. I can certainly provide some more information to help explain this recent change.

After March 1, 2024, anytime you load a gift card or an eGift card in-store or a customer buys an eGift card online through your eGift card order site, you will be charged an additional 2.5% gift card load fee based on the total amount loaded on the card. For example, if you sell a $100 gift card to a customer, you pay a $2.50 (2.5%) load fee on the transaction plus any other standard Square processing fees (like credit card processing fees). This load fee will be charged for gift cards loaded through any payment method, including credit cards, cash, or other tender payment types.

The load fee will be subtracted from your daily sales (Square balance), similar to how Square credit card processing fees are usually deducted. If your daily sales don’t cover the total fee, the remaining balance will be debited from your linked bank account linked to your Square account.

Square Gift Cards have long been free to use (with the exception of regular Square processing fees and the cost to order physical gift cards). While we have been happy to offer this pricing for quite awhile, as we continue to build more advanced features, we need to make this update so we can continue investing in the product to continue helping sellers like you. 

We believe that by lowering the cost of physical gift cards, it will make it easier for businesses like yours to continue to offer gift cards to your customers. The 2.5% per load fee ensures that you can sell as many or as few gift cards as your customers need without having to pay expensive monthly saas fees to offer gift cards like some other POS systems charge. 

We completely understand that this price change may affect your operations and overall business costs. This is not something we take lightly. As we continue to build more advanced features, we need to make this update so we can continue investing in the product to continue helping sellers like you. 

You can also review this Suppot Article for more details.

I hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions.

[_Violet · Accepted solution]

Hi there @skateman81 and @Jenthom08 - Thank you for sharing your feedback. I can certainly provide some more information to help explain this recent change.

After March 1, 2024, anytime you load a gift card or an eGift card in-store or a customer buys an eGift card online through your eGift card order site, you will be charged an additional 2.5% gift card load fee based on the total amount loaded on the card. For example, if you sell a $100 gift card to a customer, you pay a $2.50 (2.5%) load fee on the transaction plus any other standard Square processing fees (like credit card processing fees). This load fee will be charged for gift cards loaded through any payment method, including credit cards, cash, or other tender payment types.

The load fee will be subtracted from your daily sales (Square balance), similar to how Square credit card processing fees are usually deducted. If your daily sales don’t cover the total fee, the remaining balance will be debited from your linked bank account linked to your Square account.

Square Gift Cards have long been free to use (with the exception of regular Square processing fees and the cost to order physical gift cards). While we have been happy to offer this pricing for quite awhile, as we continue to build more advanced features, we need to make this update so we can continue investing in the product to continue helping sellers like you. 

We believe that by lowering the cost of physical gift cards, it will make it easier for businesses like yours to continue to offer gift cards to your customers. The 2.5% per load fee ensures that you can sell as many or as few gift cards as your customers need without having to pay expensive monthly saas fees to offer gift cards like some other POS systems charge. 

We completely understand that this price change may affect your operations and overall business costs. This is not something we take lightly. As we continue to build more advanced features, we need to make this update so we can continue investing in the product to continue helping sellers like you. 

You can also review this Suppot Article for more details.

I hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions.

[_Violet · Accepted solution]

Regarding passing the fees onto the customer, every country and state has their own laws on how to enact surcharges. You must make sure you understand local laws before ever passing on any type of transaction or processing fee to a customer. 

[Jenthom08]

I just saw this as well. This is ridiculous. I used to love the Square ecosystem but they are giving me more and more reasons to switch every day.

[_Violet · Accepted solution]

Hi there @skateman81 and @Jenthom08 - Thank you for sharing your feedback. I can certainly provide some more information to help explain this recent change.

After March 1, 2024, anytime you load a gift card or an eGift card in-store or a customer buys an eGift card online through your eGift card order site, you will be charged an additional 2.5% gift card load fee based on the total amount loaded on the card. For example, if you sell a $100 gift card to a customer, you pay a $2.50 (2.5%) load fee on the transaction plus any other standard Square processing fees (like credit card processing fees). This load fee will be charged for gift cards loaded through any payment method, including credit cards, cash, or other tender payment types.

The load fee will be subtracted from your daily sales (Square balance), similar to how Square credit card processing fees are usually deducted. If your daily sales don’t cover the total fee, the remaining balance will be debited from your linked bank account linked to your Square account.

Square Gift Cards have long been free to use (with the exception of regular Square processing fees and the cost to order physical gift cards). While we have been happy to offer this pricing for quite awhile, as we continue to build more advanced features, we need to make this update so we can continue investing in the product to continue helping sellers like you. 

We believe that by lowering the cost of physical gift cards, it will make it easier for businesses like yours to continue to offer gift cards to your customers. The 2.5% per load fee ensures that you can sell as many or as few gift cards as your customers need without having to pay expensive monthly saas fees to offer gift cards like some other POS systems charge. 

We completely understand that this price change may affect your operations and overall business costs. This is not something we take lightly. As we continue to build more advanced features, we need to make this update so we can continue investing in the product to continue helping sellers like you. 

You can also review this Suppot Article for more details.

I hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions.

[skateman81]

This information doesn’t help me, it hurts my business and my customer loyalty.  You have really hurt my business by doing this.  I would have rather paid more for gift cards.   

[Jenthom08]

Exactly, I sometimes give away gift cards or donations or marketing. Now, a $100 gift card that I give away will cost me $2.50 for exactly 0 from square. I would definitely like a refund for all of the custom gift cards that I bought in bulk a year ago for a lower cost. Will they give me a retroactive 30% discount now that I have a new future fee?

[dsachs]

“continue to build more advanced features”

So can you tell us what features we are getting for this cost? It seems to me thats an arbitrary answer that’s unprovable. Everything I pay to square I have a tangible result that benefits my business. This is just screwing people who have been loyal to you. 

Also, although it will be an administrative nightmare, wont this just force us to use paper gift certificates sold as an item? That way, we would only pay the processing fee and not be price gouged by square for no reason whatever. 

[MADBros]

Advance features that cost you an addition monthly subscription. 

[MADBros]

Yeah Honestly these companies are getting crazy. I am almost ready to download a computer base system or have my IT guy build a POS system out of my website. and then go back to certificates 

[CColotti]

But then how is the fee applying to eGift Cards as well then?  Your reasoning is for a physical card cost but eCard is costless but the fee is the same?  That's literally stealing from the vendors with the eGift Card option at the same 2.5% AND then the 2.9% + .30 transaction fee....the Digital ones should NOT have that fee then!

[CColotti]

"We believe that by lowering the cost of physical gift cards, it will make it easier for businesses like yours to continue to offer gift cards to your customers. The 2.5% per load fee ensures that you can sell as many or as few gift cards as your customers need without having to pay expensive monthly saas fees to offer gift cards like some other POS systems charge."

Again...then how is this same fee justified for a digital card?  

[NewBiz]

"Square Gift Cards have long been free to use (with the exception of regular Square processing fees and the cost to order physical gift cards). "

So, not free, and now you're charging small business twice. In most states, if not all (?) we cannot pass these fees onto our customers, nor would I want to. No longer can I offer discounts for gift cards during the holidays. 

"The 2.5% per load fee ensures that you can sell as many or as few gift cards as your customers need without having to pay expensive monthly saas fees to offer gift cards like some other POS systems charge." 

This fee is expensive to many of the small businesses square claims to support. And no, I can't sell as many as I want now. If I could afford a 5% hit on every gift card I wanted to sell then I wouldn't be complaining like the literal 100 other massage therapists I know that are unfortunately reliant on Square processing. Not to mention how many people on these threads and online forums. 

I hope Square sorts out their priorities. I've not ever seen a post on here that is answered satisfactorily and without some sort of backlash from your customers. 

[Printing]

NewBiz: if you contact us offline we can help with your concerns.

[dearness]

The gift card load fees are not appearing on the sales summary report, either as a separate line or as part of the total fees. This causes undue work to look up when posts to the GL don't match the sales summary. Why aren't they included in "Fees"

[Summer2024]

Hey there, @dearness 👋

We will definitely pass this feedback along to our Dashboard team, so they can hopefully work to add this information into our reporting. 

[dearness]

Any update? This has been 2 months

[2Flustered]

Reply to Violet and dearness:

Yes, dearness, I agree !!!

Violet/Square - so now besides charging us more money, you are causing us more work. Since you don't show the charge in the sales summary, we now have to go to the "Balance" Section and look up the transfer for that day and find what the difference is.  

Also, as to passing the fee on to the customer:  We were passing Card Processing Fees on to our customer on large transactions as many businesses in our State do - and Square told us we had to discontinue that.  Square said we should just increase our prices to cover the charge or give a discount for cash payments.  Increased prices put us at a disadvantage with our competition.  

[Steamwhistle]

I have called SO MANY TIMES regarding this.  Why is this not fixed?!?!?

[dearness]

I just sold a $250.00 egiftcard on line, the cc processing fee was $7.55, the gift card load fee was $6.25, for a total of $13.80, or 5,52% ..... seems outrageous, was this considered when the change was implemented??

[mablack]

We can't find correspondence from Square about this change.  How and when was everyone notified?

[homeprogreen]

I received both an email and a notification on my dashboard 

[2Flustered]

 Per Square:  "Square Gift Cards have long been free to use (with the exception of regular Square processing fees and the cost to order physical gift cards."  - So not free!!!   95% of our gift card sales pay with a credit card so they are already costing us plus the cost of the card!   

Also, these fees need to show on the Sales Summary like the credit card fees do.   So now besides charging us more money, you are causing us more work.  Since you don't show the charge in the sales summary, we now have to go to the "Balance" Section and look up the transfer for that day and find what the difference is.

Also, as to passing the fee on to the customer: We were passing Card Processing Fees on to our customers on large transactions as many businesses in our State do - and Square told us we had to discontinue charging a service fee or processing fee.  Square suggested we should just increase our prices to cover the charge and/or give a discount for cash payments.  Increased prices put us at a disadvantage with our competition.  So what other answer do you have?