General

Square, Inc. Affiliate Terms & Conditions

Last updated: January 31, 2017

Please read our affiliate terms and conditions carefully before you join our program or begin marketing our program. These terms and conditions are written in plain language intentionally avoiding legalese to ensure that they may be clearly understood and followed by affiliates. Each Affiliate is responsible for assuring that its employees, agents and contractors comply with these terms and conditions. Affiliate terms and conditions are subject to change. Thank you.

Definitions

As used in these terms and conditions: (i) “We”, “us”, or “our” refers to Square, Inc. and our website; (ii) “you” or “your” refers to the Affiliate; (iii) “our website” refers to the Square, Inc. properties located at www.Squareup.com; (iv) “your website” refers to any websites that you will link to our website; (v) “Program” refers to the Square, Inc. Affiliate Program.

Enrollment

After receiving your application, we will review your website and notify you of your acceptance or rejection into our Program. Please allow up to 48 hours for your application to be reviewed. We reserve the right to reject any application, however we encourage you to contact us if you feel we have made an incorrect decision. Including all of the websites that you use in your profile will help us make a better decision.

Website Restrictions

Your participating website(s) may not:

Infringe on our or any anyone else’s intellectual property, publicity, privacy or other rights.
Violate any law, rule or regulation.
Contain any content that is threatening, harassing, defamatory, obscene, harmful to minors, or contains nudity, pornography or sexually explicit materials.
Contain any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or personal information.
Contain software or use technology that attempts to intercept, divert or redirect Internet traffic to or from any other website, or that potentially enables the diversion of affiliate commissions from another website. This includes toolbars, browser plug-ins, extensions and add-ons.

Linking To Our Website

Upon acceptance into the Program, links will be made available to you through the affiliate interface. Your acceptance in our program means you agree to and abide by the following:

You will only use linking code obtained from the affiliate interface without manipulation.
All domains that use your affiliate link must be listed in your affiliate profile.
Your Website will not in any way copy, resemble, or mirror the look and feel of our Website. You will also not use any means to create the impression that your Website is our Website or any part of our Website including, without limitation, framing of our Website in any manner.
You may not engage in cookie stuffing or include pop-ups, false or misleading links on your website. In addition, wherever possible, you will not attempt to mask the referring url information (i.e. the page from where the click is originating).
Using redirects to bounce a click off of a domain from which the click did not originate in order to give the appearance that it came from that domain is prohibited.
If you are found redirecting links to hide or manipulate their original source, your current and past commissions will be voided or your commission level will be set to $0. This does not include using “out” redirects from the same domain where the affiliate link is placed.

PPC Guidelines

If you are enrolled in our Program and participate in PPC advertising, you must adhere to our PPC guidelines as follows:

You may not bid on any of our trademarked terms (which are identified below), including any variations or misspellings thereof for search or content-based campaigns on Google, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook or any other network.
You may not use our trademarked terms in sequence with any other keyword (i.e. Square Coupons).
You may not use our trademarked terms in your ad title, ad copy, display name or as the display url.
You may not direct link to our website from any Pay Per Click ad or use redirects that yield the same result. Affiliate links must be directed to an actual page on your website.
You may not bid in any manner appearing higher than Square for any search term in position 1-5 in any auction style pay-per-click advertising program
If you automate your PPC campaigns, it is your responsibility to exclude our trademarked terms from your program and we strongly suggest you add our trademarked terms as negative keywords. We have a strict no tolerance policy on PPC trademark bidding. You will forfeit all commissions for a minimum of the past 30 days and your commission will be set to $0 without warning if you engage in PPC trademark bidding that uses our trademarked terms.
Trademarked Terms: Square, Inc., Squareup.com, Square

Coupon Guidelines

Square does not offer coupon codes or promotions through the sign-up and purchase flow. If you are enrolled in our Program and your Website promotes coupon codes, you must adhere to our Coupon Guidelines as follows:

You may NOT promote Square by requiring a click to reveal an offer. Because Square does not offer promotions, this tactic is misleading to consumers. You may NOT create a falsified promotion or use copy that alludes to a promotion in order to entice a consumer to click. You may ONLY use text and banner links provided through the affiliate network

Additionally, if your website ranks on the first page of Google for terms related to our website or company name(s) combined with the words coupon, coupons, coupon code, promo code, etc. and/or your conversion rate exceeds 25%, you may be offered a lower commission than our standard rate to offset the reduced profitability of orders.

Sub-Affiliate Networks

Promoting Square, Inc. through a sub-affiliate network is permitted, however you must be completely transparent with regards to where traffic from your sub-affiliates originated. Sub-affiliate networks must ensure that all sub-affiliates promoting the Square, Inc. program adhere to our program terms and conditions. This includes restrictions on advertising through toolbars, browser extensions, and through any paid placements such as a pay-per-click campaigns. Sub-affiliate networks must also receive approval prior to allowing any type of coupon sub-affiliate to promote the Square, Inc. program and must abide by the Coupon Guidelines above.

Failure to comply with our sub-affiliate network terms may result in a loss and/or reduction of commission from sales made through any sub-affiliate that does not comply with our program terms.

Domain Names

Use of any of our trademarked terms as part of the domain or sub-domain for your website is strictly prohibited i.e. www.square.yoursite.com or www.square-coupons.com

Advertising & Publicity

You shall not create, publish, distribute, or print any written material that makes reference to our Program without first submitting that material to us and receiving our prior written consent. If you intend to promote our Program via e-mail campaigns, you must adhere to the following:

Abide by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Public Law No. 108-187) with respect to our Program.
E-mail must be sent on your behalf and must not imply that the e-mail is being sent on behalf of Square, Inc.
E-mails must first be submitted to us for approval prior to being sent or we must be sent a copy of the e-mail.

Promotion on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms is permitted following these general guidelines:

You ARE allowed to promote Square to your own lists; more specifically, you’re welcome to use your affiliate links on your own Facebook, Twitter, etc. pages. For example: You may post, “Start using Square today to help grow your small business!”
You ARE PROHIBITED from posting your affiliate links on Square, Inc.’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. company pages in an attempt to turn those links into affiliate sales.
You ARE PROHIBITED from running Facebook paid ads with Square, Inc.’s trademarked company name.
You ARE PROHIBITED from creating a social media account that includes Square, Inc.’s trademark in the page name and/or username.

Operation Outside United States

If you are conducting business in or taking orders from persons in other countries, you will follow the laws of those countries. For example, you will comply with the European Union’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive if you are conducting business in or taking orders from persons in one or more of the European Union countries.

Reversal & Communication Policy

Square, Inc. takes pride in its very low reversal rate, which we attribute to open communication with our affiliates. However, we reserve the right to reverse orders due to order cancellations, duplicate tracking, returns, disputed charges, fraudulent sign-ups or orders, account deactivations and program violations as outlined in these terms and conditions.

Square prohibits use of its payment services for certain industries listed in Section 3 of Square’s Payment Terms at «squareup.com/legal/payment». Square will deactivate account activations found to be in violation of Square’s Terms of Service and reverse orders in accordance with the paragraph above.

Additionally, if we ask you for clarification or more information on any orders or clicks that we suspect may be in violation of our terms and conditions, we expect that you will respond in a timely and honest manner. Below are violations of our communications policy.

You are not forthcoming, intentionally vague or are found to be lying.
You are not responsive within a reasonable time period and after multiple attempts to contact with information listed in your network profile.
You cannot substantiate or validate the source of your traffic to our program with clear and demonstrable proof.

If any of the above apply, then we reserve the absolute right to reverse orders, set your commission to $0 or suspend you from the program for the period or orders in question. We know that many violations are a result of automated processes; however it is incumbent upon each affiliate to ensure that it has the appropriate checks and balances in place to pro-actively address these issues and adhere to our program rules.

FTC Disclosure Requirements

You must include a disclosure statement within any and all pages, blog/posts, or social media posts where affiliate links for our affiliate program are posted as an endorsement or review, and where it is not clear that the link is a paid advertisement. This disclosure statement should be clear and concise, stating that we are compensating you for your review or endorsement. If you received the product for free from us or from the affiliate management team for review, this also must be clearly stated in your disclosure.

Disclosures must be made at the beginning of the claims and may not appear solely in a “Terms of Use”, “Legal”, “About Us” or other linked page. Disclosures should be placed above the fold; scrolling should not be necessary to find the disclosure. (e.g. disclosure should be visible before the jump). Pop-up, hover state and button disclosures are prohibited. Disclosure policy applies to all social media, even when space is restricted (e.g., tweets) Disclosures should be made in the same medium as the claim (e.g. video, text)

For more information about FTC disclosure requirements, please review the FTC’s “Dot Com Disclosures” Guidelines at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/03/130312dotcomdisclosures.pdf (example 21) and the FTC’s Endorsement Guidelines at http://business.ftc.gov/advertising-and-marketing/endorsements If you engage in so called “native advertising”, you further agree to comply with the FTC’s Enforcement Policy Statement on Deceptively Formatted Advertisements at https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/896923/151222deceptiveenforcement.pdf and the related guidelines.

Prohibition Against Solicitation for Resident Affiliates in Select States

Due to local state tax laws, we unfortunately are not accepting affiliates residing in Arkansas, Connecticut, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah or Vermont. If at any time following your enrollment in the Program you become a resident of Arkansas, Connecticut, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah or Vermont you will become ineligible to participate in the Program and your participation in the Program will automatically terminate, on the date you establish residency in that State. In addition, you must promptly notify us in writing of your Arkansas, Connecticut, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah or Vermont residency.

Confidentiality

Confidential Information” shall include, but shall not be limited to, any and all information associated with a Party’s business and not publicly known, including specific business information, technical processes and formulas, software, customer lists, prospective customer lists, names, addresses and other information regarding customers and prospective customers, Merchant Data, Customer Data, product designs, sales, costs, price lists, and other unpublished financial information, business plans and marketing data, and any other confidential and proprietary information, whether or not marked as confidential or proprietary.

Each Party agrees to use the other Party’s Confidential Information solely as necessary for performing its obligations under this Agreement. Each Party agrees that it shall take all reasonable steps, at least substantially equivalent to the steps it takes to protect its own proprietary information, to prevent the duplication, disclosure or use of any such Confidential Information, other than (i) by or to its employees, agents and subcontractors who must have access to such Confidential Information to perform such Party’s obligations hereunder, who each shall treat such Confidential Information as provided herein, and who are each subject to obligations of confidentiality to such Party that are at least as stringent as those contained herein; or (ii) as required by any law, regulation, or order of any court of proper jurisdiction over the Parties and the subject matter contained in this Agreement, provided that, if legally permitted, the receiving Party shall give the disclosing Party prompt written notice and use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that such disclosure is accorded confidential treatment. Confidential Information shall not include any information that the receiving Party can prove: (a) was already in the public domain, or was already known by or in the possession of the receiving Party, at the time of disclosure of such information; (b) is independently developed by the receiving Party without use of or reference to the other Party’s Confidential Information, and without breaching any provisions of this Agreement; or (c) is thereafter rightly obtained by the receiving Party from a source other than the disclosing Party without breaching any provision of this Agreement.