General
Privacy Notice for Square Sellers and Website Visitors
Effective Date: July 13, 2025
This Privacy Notice will be effective from 13 July 2025. The current version of this Privacy Notice, available here will remain in effect until 13 July 2025.
This Privacy Notice describes how your Square entity and affiliates as indicated below (“Square,” “we” and “us”) collects, uses, discloses, transfers, stores, retains or otherwise processes your information when you (whether you are a person acting as a sole proprietor or on behalf of another business entity) visit our website (www.squareup.com) or apply or sign up for a Square account (collectively, “Services”).
If you are a consumer shopping at a business that uses Square, please refer instead to the Privacy Notice available here. If you are a consumer shopping at a business that uses Square and you provide information to Square in order to receive a digital receipt and email marketing messages, and/or you have signed up to use Square Pay, please refer to the Privacy Notice available here.
The Square entity for Australia is Square AU PTY, Ltd.
Our Privacy Notice explains:
- INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
- WHEN AND WITH WHOM WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
- SECURITY
- COOKIES & OTHER SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES
- HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION
- YOUR CHOICES
- OVERSEAS DISCLOSURES
- CHILDREN’S PERSONAL INFORMATION
- CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE
- HOW TO CONTACT US
INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
We collect information about you in three ways: (i) when you provide it to us directly; (ii) when we gather information while you are using the Services; and (iii) when we collect information from other sources.
We only collect your personal information if it is reasonably necessary for our functions or activities and we explain below what types of data are involved in each case, and how and why we process (use) it.
Information You Provide (“Square Account Data”)
Below is a description of the types of information that we may receive directly from you which we refer to as “Square Account Data”:
| Types of Information ("Square Account Data") |
Examples |
|---|---|
| Financial Information | Bank account information and payment card numbers |
| Tax Information | Withholding allowances and tax filing status |
| Identity Information | Name, email address, postal address, signature, and phone number; Passport number, driver's license number, tax file number, or other government-issued identification number; Where additional verification is required and where you choose to share such information, photo identification, such as your passport or driver’s license in combination with a photograph, facial scan and biometrics extracted from such image, or other documents proving your identity or place of residence, including financial account statements, phone or utility bills. |
| Contacts Information | When you use any of our Services, such as Square Invoices, to send or receive payments, we may ask you to provide the contact details, such as the address, email address, or phone number of the intended recipient. You can do this by manually entering this information into the Services. When you interact with the Services through your mobile phone, you can choose to let us access and upload your phone contacts information. You can update your settings to stop sharing your phone contacts with us at any time, although we may still need a recipient’s phone or email address to submit or receive payments as requested by you. |
| Any other data you give us | Information that you voluntarily provide to us, including your survey responses; participation in contests, promotions, or other prospective seller marketing forms or devices; suggestions for improvements; information disclosed to the chatbots that operate on our Services; referrals; or any other actions you perform on the Services. |
Here is an explanation of what we do with the Square Account Data described above, i.e. how we use it and for what purposes.
| How we use Square Account Data | Purpose for using your Square Account Data |
|---|---|
| When you make a request to receive information about Square or our products we collect Identity Information that you provide to us. | To respond to your request, including determining whether the Services are available in your country. |
| We use your Identification Information and your Financial Information to go through our identity or account verification process and to enable you to authenticate into your account once it is created. We share your Identification Information with identity verification vendors, including credit reporting agencies, wireless carriers, and others, to verify information that we collect. Our vendors cross-check the identity and financial data you give us. Your information is also screened against relevant sanctions watchlists. |
To determine whether the Services are available to you, to create your account and to comply with applicable anti-money laundering (AML) regulations (e.g., Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth)), including "know your customer", background checking (see further below) and other compliance requirements. |
| We use your Identification Information to deliver the information and support you request, including to deliver technical notices, security alerts, and support and administrative messages to you. We also use it to resolve disputes, collect payments or fees, and provide assistance for problems with our Services or your Square account. | To communicate with you to fulfill our obligations under the Terms of Service. |
| When you apply or sign up for a Square account or other Services, we collect all of the Square Account Data necessary to create your account and enable you to start fulfilling transactions. | To create and support your account with us, including displaying your transaction history including monthly account statements. |
| When you use the Services to send or receive payments, we may require Contacts Information, such as the sender or recipient’s email address or phone number to fulfill the transaction. | To process the payments that you send or receive and to prevent the risk that payments may be misdirected. |
| If you choose to let us access and upload Contacts Information directly from your mobile phone, we may use this information to make it easier for you to find the people you want to send payments to, for account and identity verification and fraud prevention purposes, to reduce the risk you will send payments to the wrong person, or to provide other personalized services. | To improve your customer experience, to protect the integrity of our Services, to prevent misdirected payments, and to help personalize the Services to you. |
| We use your Identification Information to send you surveys and get your feedback about our Services. | To understand if the Services are helpful to you and to evaluate the effectiveness of any updates we provide. |
| We use your Identification Information to promote our products and Services to you. | To promote our products and services. |
| When you provide feedback to us or answer our surveys. | To improve our services and to develop new products and services. |
| We use your Identification Information to personalise your use of our Services, for example, when you sign up for a Square account, we can associate certain information with your new account, such as information about other Square accounts you have had or currently have, and prior transactions you have made using our Services. | To improve your customer experience. |
Information We Collect From Your Use of the Services
We also get data from the devices you use when you interact with our systems, like your location or information about the device you’re using. We refer to this as Usage Data.
| Types of Information ("Usage Data") |
Examples |
|---|---|
| Commercial Information |
|
| Location data, which includes the location of your device, and may in some circumstances include precise geolocation data | For more information and to learn how to disable collection of location information from your mobile device, please see below. |
| Internet or other electronic network activity information |
|
| Online identifiers |
|
| Professional or employment-related information |
|
| Profile information - Inferences drawn from any of the information above to create a profile about you |
|
We need this Usage Data to do things like provide services to you that you have requested, fulfill our legal obligations (such as checking if payments are being made or received by you and that they are legally compliant), help protect your account and prevent fraud. We also need this Usage Data to improve our products and services better for you and others, and develop new ones.
| How we use Usage Data | Why we process Usage Data |
|---|---|
| We collect your Commercial Information from the devices you use when you interact with our systems and from the information that is associated with the transaction as captured on our databases. | This enables us to provide services to you that you have requested including inventory, eCommerce and payments processing.
This also enables us to protect the integrity of our Services and systems, and your, our, our customers', or your customers' rights or property. This also enables us to do internal research, measure, track, and analyze trends and usage, to improve our products and services. |
| We use your Commercial Information when you interact with our systems and when it is associated with a transaction. We combine this information with Identification Information as well as with risk signals. | This enables us to debug, fix service errors, investigate, detect, prevent, report or recover from fraud, misrepresentations, security incidents, other potentially prohibited, malicious, or illegal activities; or to otherwise help protect your account, including to dispute chargebacks on your behalf. |
| We may use your Commercial Information in connection with artificial intelligence technologies to generate personalized features for your business. | This enables us to provide the Services that you have requested that utilize these technologies. |
| We collect your Internet or other electronic network activity information while you are using the Services using our website, web apps, and hardware and we combine this with your Profile Information. | This enables us to provide Services to you in compliance with regulatory obligations.
This enables us to provide Services to identify any unusual activity on your account so as to detect and prevent fraud, and to debug and fix errors that impair how our Services function. |
| We store your Professional or employment-related information in our databases. | This enables us to deliver aspects of the Services (e.g., Team Management, Crew App and Payroll) that require this level of information to function. |
| We generate your Profile Information using our databases. We use your Profile Information to verify your identity, and to enhance our Services. | This enables us to engage in profiling and automated processing to verify your identity both directly and through the use of third party identification verification services (so we can confirm you appear to be who you say you are), improve our products and Services, develop new products and Services and offering new and improved services to you and other sellers and end-customers. |
| We use your Geolocation data to determine whether we can provide you with Services and to customise our Services to your location. | This enables us to determine whether we can provide Services to you, and in what language, enables us to comply with applicable payment processor requirements, and other regulatory requirements, and also to combat fraud. |
Information We Collect from Other Sources
We also need to check that you are eligible for the services you want to use, are using our services legally, and to protect your data and our services from potential fraudulent activity which may put you and your money at risk. To do this, we may collect data about you from companies that help us verify your identity, do a credit check, prevent fraud or assess risk.
| Types of Information ("External Data)" |
Examples |
|---|---|
| Background Check Information |
|
| Credit, Compliance and Fraud Information |
|
| How we use External Data | Why we process External Data |
|---|---|
| We collect Background Check Information about you from background check vendors and we process this information using our anti-fraud and risk management systems. | This helps us verify your identity, do a credit check, prevent fraud and assess risk. |
| We receive and exchange Credit, Compliance and Fraud Information using our credit management systems and processes. | As required under applicable laws, as part of any credit investigation, credit eligibility, identity or account verification process, fraud or risk detection process, or collection procedure. |
WHEN AND WITH WHOM WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
We may share the personal information described in the “Information We Collect About You” section with the following categories of service providers and third parties:
| Category of third parties with whom we share your personal information in order for you to receive the Services | Description of the services in question |
|---|---|
| Service support partners | We work with the following types of third party service providers who help us provide, maintain and improve the
Services:
|
| Third Party Analytics Services | Our analytics partners help us with our online services, such as Google Analytics,
Facebook, BugSnag and Crashlytics. The analytics providers that administer these services use technologies such as
cookies, web beacons, and web server logs to help us analyze how you use our online services. We may disclose your site-use information (including IP address) to these analytics providers, and other service providers who use the information to help us figure out how you and others use our online services.
|
| Online Tracking and Interest-Based Advertising | Consistent with local law, we and our advertising partners may collect information about your activities on our website. We use this information to advertise to you and to tailor our products and services to your interests. You may see certain ads on other websites because we use third-party services to advertise our services to you. We use these services to target our ads to you and others based on your demographics, interests, and context. These third party ad services track your online activities over time and across multiple websites by collecting your information through automated technologies, including third-party cookies, pixel tracking, web server logs, and web beacons. The ad services use this information to show you Square ads that may be tailored to your individual interests. The information our ad services may collect on our behalf includes data about your visits to websites that serve Square ads, such as the pages or ads you view and the actions you take on those websites. This data collection takes place both on our online services, and on third-party websites that serve our ads to you. This process also helps us figure out if our ads to you are effective. Certain web browsers allow you to instruct your browser to respond to Do Not Track ("DNT") signals to website you visit, informing those sites that you do not want your online activities to be tracked. At this time, our websites are not designed to respond to DNT signals or similar mechanisms from browsers. |
| Partners | We may share minimal personal information (such as your business name) with potential partners who may be able to provide a complementary or related service for your business. We may also share personal information with partners if we believe the disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect us, users of our Services or the public from harm, fraud, or potentially prohibited or illegal activities. We work with partners who may receive compensation for helping us to identify prospective Sellers interested in Square. To help identify these prospective Sellers, we may also use automated tools such as web scraping, data enrichment services or similar technologies to collect publicly available business information and minimal personal information (such as your contact details). If you were referred to Square by one of our referral partners, we may share limited commercial information related to your use of Square, such as the date you activated your account and the volume of transactions you process through Square, to provide reporting on the referral fees earned by the partner that referred you. |
| Our Affiliates and Group Companies | With other business units (Cash App, Afterpay/Clearpay, and TIDAL) and between wholly-owned subsidiaries of Block, Inc. For example, we may share your information internally to understand how you engage with our company products to help make our Services better for you and for everyone, to help us build Services tailored to your preferences, and to help protect our services and maintain a trusted environment. |
| Advertising partners | We may also share limited information about your business (i.e. business location and name, and purchase information on Buyer receipts) with our group companies and our advertising partners which include Yahoo Ad Tech Australia Pty Ltd, Narrative I/O Inc and Magnite Inc. for the purposes of facilitating personalised advertising to Buyers within our commerce media network. |
| Other third parties who will receive your personal information | Why we share data with these parties |
|---|---|
| Other users of our Services with whom you interact through your own use of our Services. | To enable you to make or accept a payment, appointment, or money transfer using our Services. |
| Law enforcement and other public and private agencies | If we believe that disclosure is reasonably necessary (i) to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request (e.g., from creditors, tax authorities, law enforcement agencies, in response to a garnishment, levy, or lien notice, etc.); (ii) to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights; (iii) to enforce or comply with our General Terms or other applicable agreements or policies; (iv) to protect our or our customers' rights or property, or the security or integrity of our Services; (v) for an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity; or (vi) to protect us, users of our Services or the public from harm, fraud, or potentially prohibited or illegal activities. |
| To a subsequent owner, co-owner, or operator of one or more of the Services | To enable them to continue to run the Services after the change of owner or operator. |
| If we do or try to do a corporate merger, consolidation, or restructuring (including during due diligence and negotiation of these); the sale of substantially all of our stock and/or assets; the financing, acquisition, divestiture, or dissolution of all or a portion of our business; or other corporate change. | To enable the completion of the relevant merger, restructuring, financing, acquisition, divestiture, dissolution or other corporate change. |
| To others, at your direction | To carry out certain requests you make for us to share data. |
We may share your information with Cuscal Limited, an Authorised Deposit-Taking Institution (ADI) supervised by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). Cuscal supports our provision of the Services through its banking and payments services and may not be able to provide its services without information about you. Cuscal’s privacy policy is available via www.cuscal.con.au/privacy-policy and sets out details about Cuscal’s collection, use and disclosure of information about you, as well as information about your rights to access your personal information.
SECURITY
We do a lot to keep your data safe. While we think we have strong defenses in place, no one can ever guarantee that hackers won’t be able to break into our sites or steal your data while it is stored or flowing from you to us or vice versa.
We take reasonable measures, including organisational, administrative, technical, and physical safeguards, to protect your information from loss, theft, and misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. Nevertheless, the internet is not a 100% secure environment, and we cannot guarantee absolute security of the transmission or storage of your information. We hold information about you both at our own premises and with the assistance of third-party service providers. Your personal information will be accessible by our employees, contractors and service providers who require access for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice.
For more information about our security practices, please visit https://squareup.com/au/en/security.
COOKIES, OTHER SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES, AND ADVERTISING
If you are reading this Privacy Notice in a country where we have a separate Cookies Policy, you will see the Cookie Banner that applies to you each time you visit the site.
The following additional information applies across all of our websites and apps.
Digital cookies and similar technologies help us make our services better to use by doing things like recognizing when you’ve signed in, analyzing how you use our services so we can make them more useful to you, giving you a more personalized experience.
When you interact with our online services, or open emails we send you, we obtain certain information using automated technologies, such as cookies, web server logs, web beacons and other technologies. A “cookie” is a text file that websites send to a visitor’s computer or other internet-connected device to uniquely identify the visitor’s browser or to store information or settings in the browser. A “web beacon,” also known as an internet tag, pixel tag, or clear GIF, is a tiny graphic image that may be used in our websites or emails.
We use these automated technologies to collect your device information, internet activity information, and inferences as described above. These technologies help us to:
- Remember your information so you do not have to re-enter it;
- Track and understand how you use and interact with our online services and emails;
- Tailor our online services to your preferences;
- Measure how useful and effective our services and communications are to you; and
- Otherwise manage and enhance our products and services.
We set some of these automated technologies ourselves, but others are set by third parties who deliver services on our behalf. For example, we may use other companies’ web analytics services (described in the “Third-Party Analytics Services” section above), which use automated technologies to help us evaluate how customers use our websites. Some of these technologies may also be set by third parties that help us advertise our products and services to you as informed by your interests, based on information collected from your activity on the web, including but not limited to, browsing or purchasing products on or through our websites or on third party websites or your activity on mobile sites and applications. This advertising approach is called interest-based advertising or “targeted advertising.”
Your browser can alert you when cookies are placed on your device, and how you can stop or disable them via your browser settings. More information on how to manage these settings on common browsers and devices are below.
- Manage cookie settings in Chrome and Chrome Android and Chrome iOS
- Manage cookie settings in Firefox
- Manage cookie settings in Internet Explorer
- Manage cookie settings in Microsoft Edge
- Manage cookie settings in Safari and Safari iOS
Please note, however, that without cookies all of the features of our online services may not work properly. If you use a mobile device, you can manage how your device and browser share certain device data by changing the privacy and security settings on your mobile device.
Within mobile applications, you may also go to your device settings and select “Limit Ad Tracking” (for iOS devices), or “Opt out of Interest-Based Ads” (for Android devices), which will allow you to limit our use of information collected from or about your mobile device (such as precise location data) for the purposes of serving online behavioral advertising to you.
You can also opt out of receiving interest-based ads from third party advertisers who are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) or who follow the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising by visiting the opt out pages on the NAI website and DAA website.
HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION
We have reasonable processes in place to help store your information for as long as is necessary for the purposes identified in this Privacy Notice, including to provide our Services, to comply with legal obligations, to enforce and prevent violations of our Terms, to protect against or investigate potential fraudulent activity, and to defend our legal rights, property and users.
The retention periods for your information are determined on a case-by-case basis that depends on the following factors:
-
The nature of the information and why it is collected and processed, as described in this Privacy Notice. This includes to provide our Services, to comply with legal obligations, to enforce and prevent violations of our agreement with you, and to protect us against fraudulent activity.
-
To respond to a legal request or to comply with applicable law. We must keep your information where we have a legal obligation to do so, for example, if we receive a valid legal request, such as a preservation order or search warrant, related to your account, we preserve your information after you delete your account.
-
To deal with and resolve requests, disputes or complaints.
-
For litigation or regulatory purposes. For example, we preserve your information related to a legal claim or complaint, such as where we are subject to a regulatory investigation or we need to defend ourselves in legal proceedings about a claim related to your information or respond to a regulator in relation to a legal or regulatory complaint made by you or someone else.
-
Issues relating to the safety, security and integrity of our Services. For example, we keep information where it is necessary to investigate misuse of our Services, such as fraud.
YOUR CHOICES
As described further below, you may be entitled to certain rights with respect to your personal information. You can also ask us to deactivate your account, or control your location information.
Your Personal Information Rights
You are entitled to:
- Request access to personal information that we hold about you.
- Deletion of the personal information we have collected from you provided the information is not required to be retained for legal, regulatory or compliance purposes;
- Request correction of the personal information we have collected about you;
- To opt-out of the sharing of receiving promotional messages from us.
You may submit an access, deletion, or correction request through our dedicated online portal at privacy.block.xyz (for Sellers: click the Square logo and then select “Business owner” on the “What type of data are you looking to manage?” page; for Buyers: click the Square logo and then select “Customer”). Once we receive your request, we will verify it by requesting that you confirm certain personal information associated with your account. You may also be entitled to submit a request through an authorized agent. You may also message us through privacy.block.xyz (click on the Square logo and then select “Other” on the “What type of data are you looking to manage?” page) to appeal our denial of any of your access, deletion, or correction requests.
Although some of the information we collect and process about you may be considered sensitive personal information, we only process such information for purposes authorized by law, such as to provide services you request from us or to verify your information.
Deactivating Your Account
If you wish to deactivate your account, you can do so by logging into your Square account or by emailing us using the contact details provided below.
Location Information
In order to provide certain Services, we may request access to location information, including precise geolocation information collected from your device. If you do not consent to the collection of this information, certain Services will not function properly and you will not be able to use those Services. You can stop our collection of location information at any time by changing the preferences on your mobile device. If you do so, some of our mobile applications will no longer function. You also may stop our collection of location information via mobile application by following the standard uninstall process to remove all Square mobile applications from your device.
Promotional Communications
You can opt out of receiving promotional messages from Square by following the instructions in those messages, by informing the caller that you would not like to receive future promotional calls, or by changing your notification settings by logging into your Square account. You may only opt out of text messages from Square by replying STOP. Opting out of receiving communications may impact your use of the Services. If you decide to opt out, we will still send you non-promotional communications which are required for the running of your account, such as digital receipts and messages about your account or our ongoing business relations.
OVERSEAS DISCLOSURES
We may, and we may disclose your information to third-party service providers outside of Australia for the purpose of processing and storing your information, including, but not limited to, in the United States, Canada, Japan, Ireland, France, Spain and the UK.
CHILDREN’S PERSONAL INFORMATION
Our Services are general audience services not directed at children under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect, share, or sell any information from children under the age of 18. If we learn that any information we collect has been provided by a child under the age of 18, we will promptly delete that information.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE
We reserve the right to change this Privacy Notice from time to time, as may be required. We will take reasonable steps to provide you with reasonable notice of any material changes to this Privacy Notice in a form that is appropriate. If you disagree with these changes, you may cancel your account at any time. Any amendments will be published by posting a revised version of the Privacy Notice and updating the “Effective Date” above. The revised version will be effective on the “Effective Date” listed.
CONTACT
If you have any questions or concerns, or complaints about our privacy compliance, you can contact us at:
Square AU PTY, Ltd.
Address: Lv. 8, 376-390 Collins Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
Phone number: 1800 760 137 between Monday to Friday 9AM - 5PM Melbourne time
We will respond to let you know when you can expect a further response and who will be handling your matter. We may request additional details from you regarding your concerns and may need to engage or consult with other parties in order to investigate and address your issue. We may keep records of your request and any resolution.
If you are dissatisfied with the results of our investigation or any resulting corrective measures, you may be entitled to make a complaint to the relevant privacy or data security regulator in your jurisdiction.
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)
Phone: 1300 363 992
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
Address: GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001