Thinking of Using the Square Reader for your Business? Think again.

As you conduct your research for mobile credit card processing, you may have come across “Square” – the company that provides free card readers and card processing services. But before you get lured in by their free swipers, there are several important things you need to know.

As of May 2013, Square’s fees remain at 2.75% for swiped transactions (or a flat $275 per month and 0% per transaction). That is just for swiped transactions. If you don’t have your swiper or if the swiper does not work properly, you may have to key-in the credit card details which will raise your rate to 3.50% and $0.15 per transaction.

If you process more than $2,002 of manually-entered (keyed-in) within a 7 day period, Square will hold the remainder of the money (e.g. if you processed $2,500 within a week, they will hold $498) for up to 30 days until you apply to increase your limit. This can certainly place limitations on your business’ cash flow!

But don’t attempt to give Square a call regarding your held funds because they do not offer customer support over the phone – you must contact them via email or Twitter. There is not even a listed phone number on their website.

So before you sign on with Square, it is important to ask yourself these questions: How much do I value customer support? Will the rate eat into my profit margin? Does this service accommodate my business’ monthly credit card processing sales volume?

At Group ISO Merchant Services, we always give our merchants the best rates and real customer service (no automated voice systems here!). You can always count a real person to answer our phones. Learn why TopCreditCardProcessors.com ranked Group ISO among the Top 3 Mobile Credit Card Processors! Call us at 800-722-4476.