My friend does craft fairs. She went with Square and is happy with it.
Interesting b I’ve never heard of Zelle or Vinmo. Any farmers market / craft sale / popcorn wagon I’ve been to uses Square.
Funny, I’ve never heard of Square. I wonder if it’s generational? My kids and their friends all use Venmo. I googled it and they supposedly have 70 million users.
Or is it location? @Northern_Piper are you in Canada? Venmo is USA only.
Yes, I’m in Canada.
Yeah, I don’t use the Zelle app either; I access Zelle through my bank’s app on my phone. Under “pay bills”, Zelle is one of the options listed there.
I’ve seen Venmo and Zelle used by small businesses like vendors at farmer’s markets but I think they are mostly used for transfers between friends and family.
A lot of restaurants use it. It’s a small white device that you stick your card in, like any other credit card reader. You may have used it and not realized it.
What if your phone can’t download apps? Can you use an iPad?
I believe that’s what the gyro shop near me uses. (And other places.) It’s what you sign on.
I don’t think you can sign on my iPad, either. At any rate, not if you mean write on the screen with a stylus or finger or whatever.
I could very likely be wrong on this. I didn’t really pay that much attention at the time and my memory isn’t great. Hopefully someone who knows what they’re talking about can help out. Or maybe Google knows?
Zelle is US only, as well (it’s owned by a number of the bigger U.S. banks).
Venmo has a QR code within the app that you can either quickly show someone from within your app (literally hold up your phone) who can scan it with their phone on THEIR app to connect with you. Or you can print out the QR code. You also DO NOT have to give someone your phone number for them to send you money - I tell people my username.
Venmo is like PayPal, Zelle and CashApp in that they are basically apps people use to send each other money (it does many other things but this is what the general public uses it for).
Square is more like an appliance (the card scanning phone dongle) that is mostly used by businesses small and smaller to take credit cards via an app. If anyone ever asks you to pay by inserting your card in a little square box that fits in their hand, that’s Square. Regular People generally do not have Square, as people generally do not need to take credit card payments.
Most people do expect a vendor to have Square and accept credit cards, and it’s kind of a good idea IMHO. When I go to craft shows and toy shows it seems like 90% of the vendors have Square. But also I understand when they don’t. Fees is fees.
I agree with others who say just set up Venmo while she’s deciding on Square.
Note that when you set up Venmo/PayPal/CashApp/Zelle you’re just A Person With A Debit Card and you are transferring money casually between “friends” with no fees. But at some point if you make enough transactions or maybe if you have a certain pattern, Venmo/PayPal/CashApp/Zelle will realize you’re a business and will start charging you fees. I don’t think there’s any sort of account-canceling penalty when they decide you’re a business, they might just start charging fees.
Canadian here.
For selling my books, I have a Square account with a payment terminal that includes a receipt printer. It takes Visa, MasterCard, and Interac (the Canadian debit-card system offered by almost all the banks and financial services). MC and Visa are something like 30c + 2.5% of the transaction, but Interac is a flat fee of IIRC 10c per transaction. Merchants love Interac.
The terminal can take swipe and chip cards, and also accepts The Tap (EMV contactless payment), which means that it can handle phones and other devices with Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.
There is also the possibility of taking Visa and MC manually via a voice call and submitting the transaction later through the terminal or the online Square account, for a higher percentage fee (3.6% IIRC). Interac, being online only, settles transactions immediately and does not offer delayed submittal of transactions.
Since I am in Canada, we don’t have Venmo or Zelle. We do have Paypal, but the big gorilla of Canadian interpersonal money transfer is Interac online transfer. It’s offered by the same company that runs the debit card system, and is extremely commonly used.
The Square terminal can also log a cash sale. For all transactions it can print a receipt.
Oh, and to add: the per-transaction fees are the only fees Square charges, other than the price of buying a payment terminal. There are no monthly fees.
Just an update: I got in touch with the fellow at the booth next to us, and he advised just going with Square. And I was all set to get Mom set up with it, but she said to wait until closer to the start of the next farmers’ market season, because she reckons that she’ll forget how to use it if she gets it now.
So, decision made, and we’ll see how it goes then.