Square Announces New APIs for Omnichannel Commerce at Unboxed 2022
Cash App Pay for Developers further bridges the Square and Cash App ecosystems, while Checkout API, Booking API, and Terminal API make building commerce apps easier for developers
Today, at Square’s sixth annual partner and developer conference, Square Unboxed, the company announced a number of new developer tools, including the highly anticipated Cash App Pay for developers.
Cash App Pay extends the benefits of the innovative new checkout experience to Square’s developer and partner ecosystem via Square’s Web Payments SDK. Developers can add the payment method to their Square-powered online checkout flow with just a few lines of code.
The new integration enables developers to support payments made through Cash App, Block’s peer-to-peer payment app that has more than 70 million annual active users in the U.S.
“Enabling patients to pay with Cash App for their healthcare services and prescriptions allows healthcare organizations to further increase financial accessibility and inclusivity, especially for the growing population of patients that primarily utilize non-traditional banking,” said John Bona, Co-Founder of Reference Health. “Healthcare organizations need to accept any and every form of payment the patient is willing to use - including supporting accepting payments from the growing category of mobile payment apps like Cash App.”
In addition to Cash App Pay for developers, Square also announced two new APIs designed to help developers and partners build and enhance commerce solutions for sellers: Bookings API and Checkout API. Bookings API is now generally available and lets developers leverage the functionality of Square Appointments within their app. This means a developer can create and manage bookings, search availability of staff members, send automated text and email reminders, and more with the API.
Checkout API is a simple, fast way to integrate Square through a Square-hosted checkout page that works via text, website, internal dashboard, in-store, and more. The new version of the API offers flexible configuration; supports new payment methods like Afterpay, Cash App Pay, and Square Pay; and is available in more countries than before.
Square also released new beta features for Terminal API, which was originally launched at Unboxed 2020. The features unlock new omnichannel use cases and include order itemization on the Terminal device, delayed capture to authorize a payment upfront and collect funds later, card on file for recurring purchases, and app fees so developers can monetize on payments processed via Terminal API.
“Square makes it possible to serve customers quickly and reliably across all of our channels, even during peak hours,” said Mark Stinson, CTO at Kura Sushi. “We integrated Square Terminal API so our staff could accept payments on Square’s beautiful Terminal hardware and so all payment data could sync with our custom, in-house POS. We recently added delayed capture to our integration — a critical capability for restaurants. Throughout this process, Square showed up for us with hands-on customer support, clear technical documentation, and APIs that are simple to integrate — transforming our technology stack.”
During the opening remarks at the conference, Square’s GM of Partnerships & Developer Platform, Vijay Vachani, outlined how Square’s partner initiatives have grown in recent years, revealing that more than 900,000 active sellers are using partner integrations on Square’s platform, a 10% increase year over year. Further, partners are seeing more profitability by leveraging Square’s platform with a 150% growth of payouts year over year.
“Square has been on a multi-year transformative journey,” said Vichani. “It started with our initial value proposition of accepting credit cards with a simple device, to now offering tools that connect every aspect of a business - regardless of type or size. We have evolved from a payments and hardware provider, to a robust software and integrated commerce ecosystem.”
Cash App Pay for Developers and Terminal API’s new beta features are available now in the US. Bookings API is available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, and Japan, while the new Checkout API features are available everywhere Square operates globally.
To learn more about joining Square’s growing partner ecosystem, visit https://squareup.com/partnerships. To learn more about the many other APIs and SDKs now available on Square’s Developer Platform, visit https://developer.squareup.com.