Create and share payment links
About payment links
Square Payment Links provide a simple way to accept online payments without the need for a dedicated eCommerce website. You simply create a payment link and share it directly with customers, or post it where they can easily find it and pay at their convenience.
With payment links, you can even offer a touch-free checkout experience through your Square Point of Sale. When you send a payment link from your point of sale, your customer will get a unique link on their phone they can use to pay without needing to enter PINs or install special apps, helping create a safer, contact-free environment when necessary.
Before you begin
You can create, share and deactivate payment links from Square Dashboard and Square Point of Sale. From your Square Dashboard, you can create a payment link to Collect a payment, Sell an item, Accept a donationor Sell an event or class. From your point of sale app, you can create a payment link to Collect a payment, Sell an itemor Accept a donation. You cannot Sell an event or class from your point of sale app at this time.
Depending on the payment link type, some payment link options – such as redirecting links to a website – can only be set up from Square Dashboard.
Payment links are available for both domestic and international sales. However, for international sales, taxes and shipping fee settings cannot be applied.
If you'd like to sell a larger online catalogue, reach more customers internationally, set up more online fulfilment methods or create a fully customisable online store, learn how to set up your website.
Create a payment link
You can create payment links to take payments, sell items, sell events or classes or accept donations. If using a payment link to collect donations, learn how to set up donation goals with payment links.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Orders & payments (or Invoices & Payments or Payments) > Payment links.
- Click Create a link.
- Select Collect a payment, Sell an item, Accept a donation, or Sell an event or class.
- Enter a name for your link to be displayed to your customer. If you’re selling an item, select the item from your Item library, or create a new one.
- Enter in the amount you want to charge.
- Choose a Frequency if prompted to accept recurring payments.
- Add an optional description. The description for each payment link has a 400 character limit.
- Add an optional image.
- Click Advanced settings to toggle on additional features such as Enable tipping, Allow buyer to set the price, Redirect to a website after checkout, or Enable custom fields.
- Click Create link.
- Select Copy link to share the link anywhere.
Note: When creating a new link for a new product in your item library, you can add a brand new description. This description will sync back to your item library for future use. For an existing item in your library, you can use your pre-existing description or create a new description to overwrite the previous one. Managing descriptions is currently only available in the Square Dashboard.
- From your Square Point of Sale app, tap ≡ More > Payment Links. Note: If Payment Links does not appear in ≡ More, add it to your POS app by tapping ≡ More > Add-ons > Payment links > Add for free.
- Tap (+) in the Payment Links section.
- Choose a payment link type.
- If prompted, enter the name, amount, and description for your link and choose the applicable options.
- Tap Save.
- Tap Share link, Send via text, or Print QR code.
Share a payment link
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Orders & payments (or Invoices & Payments or Payments) > Payment links.
- Next to the payment link you want to share, click Share and choose your share option.
Share options include:
- Manually copy the link to share via your own channels.
- Create QR code. Download it to your files, display it anywhere and customers can scan it to pay you directly.
- Create a Buy button to embed the code to your website.
- Post to social media channels like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
- Create an email campaign with Square Marketing.
- From your Square Point of Sale app, go to ≡ More > Payment Links.
- Tap the payment link you want to share, then tap Share link and choose your share option.
Share options include:
- Copying the link
- Sharing via text
- Creating a QR code to print
Note: You can also send payment links from the checkout screen of your Square Point of Sale by selecting Charge and tapping the Send Payment Link option. This will create a touch-free checkout experience so you don’t have to manage cash or cards.
You can send payment links directly to your customers via text message using Square Virtual Terminal from your computer. You can collect contactless payments from customers in real-time when they aren’t physically with you. To do so:
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Orders & payments (or Invoices & Payments or Payments) > Virtual Terminal.
- Select Take a payment.
- Add a custom amount to Quick charge or add items to Itemised sale.
- Add an existing customer or create a new one.
- Under Payment details, select Send payment link.
- Select your customer’s country code.
- Enter the customer’s phone number and click Send link.
- Your customer will receive a text message with a payment link. The link will take your customers directly to an online checkout page to pay on their mobile devices, where they can pay with a supported debit or credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, or Afterpay.
- Wait for confirmation that the customer completed the payment.
Note: Selecting the back button while a payment is pending will cancel the payment link. You must wait until you receive the payment before closing the window.
Deactivate a payment link
Payment links must be Active to be used, but you can deactivate or delete a payment link at any time. Once deleted or deactivated, the payment link will become unavailable to anyone you shared it with. This action cannot be undone.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Orders & payments (or Invoices & Payments or Payments) > Payment links.
- Select the payment link you want to deactivate or delete.
- Click Delete or Deactivate.
View payment links reporting
You can easily track the amount of sales generated from each payment link you've created to understand how each one is performing.
Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Payments & orders (or Payments & invoices or Payments) > Payment links > Payment links.
Review the sales per link in the Total Sales column.
You can also view all of your sales and then filter by payment links.
Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Reports > Sales > Sales Summary.
Click Filter by, then click Source > Payment Links.