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The way your customers are choosing to pay for things is changing — and fast. Make sure that your business stays up to date, secure and streamlined with our guide for every payment method that may come across the counter:
Credit and Debit cards
With the reduction in use of cash in Australia continuing, Chip Cards and Contactless Cards are the norm for customers checking out at your business. In fact, Australia ranks sixth in the world’s top 10 cashless economies. These days we only carry $55 in our wallets on average and we top up our funds from the ATM less than once a week.
With Square Reader it’s simpler and easier than ever to accept credit and debit cards, whether you’re running a countertop or mobile business — without the hassle of long-term contracts, hidden fees or variable processing rates for different card types.
Mobile wallets
This recently introduced payment method uses near field communication (NFC) to transmit information from a mobile device to a card reader. NFC is a type of radio frequency identification technology that allows your smartphone and a payments device to talk to each other wirelessly and complete the appropriately named contactless payment.
NFC transactions are secure and fast, taking just seconds to process. On top of that, they’re a lot more convenient for customers — who no longer need to carry around a physical wallet now that their smartphone is all that’s required to process a payment. As a business owner, you can start accepting mobile payments by purchasing an affordable NFC reader like the Square Reader for contactless and chip. You can read more about how you can start accepting mobile wallets like Apple Pay in our post Accepting Apple Pay in Your Business.
Here are the three most well know examples of mobile wallets (all of which you can accept with the Square Reader for contactless and chip):
Apple Pay
Apple Pay is currently available on newer versions of the iPhone, as well as the Apple Watch. When customers pay with this method, they use a credit or debit card saved to Wallet and hold their iPhone or Apple Watch over a card reader while holding their finger on the Touch ID button to have their print scanned and verified.
Android Pay
Google’s mobile wallet technology is known as Android Pay, is available on any NFC-enabled devices that run Android version 4.4 or later. To use Android Pay, customers just open the app on their phone (which requires the user to have a secure lock screen) and complete the transaction by holding their device over the card reader.
Samsung Pay
To use Samsung Pay, customers open the app and then hold their device over the point-of-sale device. This technology is available on the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, and Galaxy Note 5.
Digital Invoices
Business owners managing clients understand that it’s a constant struggle between completing the work in a timely manner, and getting paid in the same fashion. This can be made even more frustrating when you’re relying on physical paperwork, manual reconciliations and chasing up clients for payment over the phone.
Digital invoices helps to streamline this process. Square Invoices enables you to send email invoices for free from the [Square Point of Sale app]((https://squareup.com/au/pos) on your smartphone or tablet device, and then track the payment from open to deposit.
We’re continuing to see big shifts in the way that customers pay for things, so now’s the time to ensure you can quickly and securely accept any sale. Fast-track the latest and greatest POS and payments processing technologies at your business.
Want to try digital invoices? Click here to get started today.
More Ways to Get Paid With Square
Square offers and abundance of online and in-person payment tools designed to help you grow and streamline your business. Here are eight ways you can integrate online payments into your business.
5 Payment Methods for You to Choose From
| # | Payment Method | Cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Online Invoices | 2.2% per invoice paid | Regularly billing remote clients |
| 2 | E-Commerce | 2.2% per transaction | Easy e-commerce sales with partner integrations (Weebly, Wix, etc.) |
| 3 | App Marketplace | Free | Integrate with your existing apps (Intuit, Xero, Deputy, etc.) |
| 4 | Virtual Terminal | 2.2% per transaction | Accept remote payments over the phone from your web dashboard |
| 5 | Take payments with Square Point of Sale | 1.9% per tap or dip | In-person payments |
Online payment methods
Online Invoicing
Sending out paper invoices is slow, manual, time consuming, and definitely not so friendly to the environment. Square Invoices is a more streamlined, convenient, and eco-friendly to accept payments from customers or clients. You can use ready-made invoicing templates to quickly and easily spin up invoices and send them out to your customers, where they can pay with a click right from the email. Streamlining this process for customers means you can take payment a whole lot faster, and paid invoices land in your bank account as fast as the next day. Square Invoices also enables you to track all your invoices, so you can quickly see what’s been paid and what’s outstanding.
Explore App Marketplace’s online store integrations
Square App Marketplace has 17 business apps you can connect to your Square account to help you streamline the platforms you’re using to run your business. Using our integrations with Wix, Weebly, Ecwid or BigCommerce, you can set up a beautiful online store to complement your brick-and-mortar store. In addition to being a way to accept online payments, Square also offers integrations with apps that can help you do everything from siplifying inventory management to managing your bookkeeping.
Or use Square Online Store and have everything in one place.
Build your e-commerce solution with our E-Commerce API
With Square’s API for E-Commerce, you can use Square to accept online payments on your own self-hosted, fully developed website. By seamlessly integrating your website with Square, you can grow both your online and offline businesses together with one partner, and from one convenient dashboard. Square’s API for E-Commerce also makes PCI compliance easy. Square takes on the burden of staying PCI compliant. No checklists, assessments, or audits required.
In-person payments
Manually enter transactions in the Square Point of Sale app
Left your Square Reader at home? You don’t need to miss a sale. Manually enter your customer’s credit card information into the Square Point of Sale app for a card-not-present (CNP) transaction. For manually entered transactions, Square’s fee is 2.2% per transaction. To use Square Point of Sale’s manual entry feature, you need your customer’s complete card number, expiration date, and security code/CVV. Read more about using manual entgry.
Remember: Manual entry is best for businesses that only occasionally bill remotely. If you regularly bill customers from afar, consider trying Square Invoices. It’s free to send unlimited invoices with Square, and you only pay for the invoices that are paid online.
Accept debit and credit payments with Square Reader
Using Square Point of Sale, you can accept credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and Android Pay at a rate of 1.9% per tap, dip or swipe. Square offers two different Readers: a chip card reader designed for mobile businesses processing less frequent payments, as well as a contactless and chip card reader for businesses who process faster and more frequent card payments.
Remote payment methods
Remote payments are ideal for businesses that accept payments over the phone when charging a client’s credit card. Because card-not-present (CNP) transactions naturally carry a higher amount of risk, payment processing fees tend to be higher to accommodate a higher occurrence of chargebacks or fraud.
Virtual Terminal
Accept payments right from your web browser with Virtual Terminal at a rate of 2.2% per transaction. There is no hardware, reader, or app installation required. To process a transaction, you need your customer’s debit or credi card number, expiration date, and CVV/CVV2.
