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Square Terminal

squareup.com

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Re: Square Terminal

#91

Post by snotrockets »

kmm wrote: post #67
zaksoup wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind is that in many states tipped minimum wage is significantly lower than hourly minimum wage. As low as $2.50 an hour. Tipping is bad for everybody, including the workers involved, but framing tipping as purely a response to “performance” isn’t always the whole story.

In no state is the minimum wage the employee takes home lower than $7.25 an hour. The employer can pay them less only if the tips make up the difference, down to $2.13(!) an hour. Of course, most waiters and servers end up making quite a bit more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage

[citation needed]

Re: Square Terminal

#92

Post by tdeck »

snotrockets wrote: post #73
MithrilTuxedo wrote: post #50

How is this going to affect how often I get asked to tip? I want to see less tipping, not more. Square seems to be one of the primary offenders in introducing bribery to transactions where I don't really want to rate how much I was pleasured by the personal performance being put on for me. Getting coffee shouldn't be embarrassing, and don't prompt me to tip you before you give me what I'm paying for.

That's not how tips in the US work. In the US, tips are simply shifting employer responsibility for their employees to the customer. If you are in the US, tip or avoid business that utilizing tipping.

That's certainly true of restaurants and some other professions, but is it true of coffee shops too?

Re: Square Terminal

#93

Post by spc476 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #83
spc476 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Chili's (an American chain restaurant) they have these payment devices on each table. I can't stand them. First, they take up space on the table that can get quite crowded with all the plates and glasses that tend to accumulate during the meal. Second, they play constant ads (great, now each table can have a TV! What a wonderful distraction). Third, I've experienced about a third of the time, the device isn't work…

> waitron [1] Or, if you don't want to sound like you are describing a robot using a term Merriam-Webster describes as “vaguely disparaging” [0], you could use the gender neutral term almost universally used in the industry, “server”. [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/waitron

Thank you! I knew there was another term but I couldn't remember it.

Re: Square Terminal

#94

Post by floatingatoll »

dawhizkid wrote: post #69
floatingatoll wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CVS Pharmacy recently gave up on a years-long initiative to convince Americans to pay with QR codes. It seems market-appropriate, in light of that total failure, to have reservations about adding camera hardware to a cash register.

AFAIK Starbucks' own app represents a sizable percentage of mobile payments in the U.S. and is QR-code based. I don't think Square should take cues from one random merchant's failure with QR-code payments to decide whether or not it will take off in the future. Also I assume Square has ambitions to expand globally and in doing needs to shake off a western bias when it comes to payments.

CVS just paid $69 billion dollars to buy a health insurer. Calling them a “random merchant” considerably underestimates both their leverage over, and in general their relevance to, the payment processing industry.

EDIT:

Square’s 2017Q4 net revenue is about $600 million dollars, CVS’s 2017Q4 net revenue is about $48 billion dollars. Assuming the retail 2.5% transaction fee, CVS paid $1.2 billion dollars of credit card fees in 2017Q4, approximately double Square’s total revenue for that period.

Square would be very wise to take note of CVS’s failure in the QRcode payment app market, given that CVS generates twice their total net revenue in processing fees alone.

Re: Square Terminal

#95

Post by tdeck »

jdironman wrote: post #21

Honest question, I have never used Square, but what does the back-end for setting up products look like? In a resturant you may have many variations for a meal (Hamburger, no lettuce, extra mayo, etc.) and some may incur different fees. Has anyone had experience with that which can provide links or insight? I ask this because I got asked to help with a local mom and pops (Taco Shop) setup of their POS and genuinely c…

I worked on the Square API for more than a year so I am fairly familiar with their data model for items, although I think it has since been enhanced.

Basically you have an item, and within that item there are variations (like different SKUs). Items can also have modifiers that apply to that particular item, and these are multiple choice. So you'd have a burger item say, where the variations are beef or veggie. Then you'd have modifiers like lettuce, tomato, onion, etc. Modifiers can have a cost or be free, different variations have a price.

You can also apply discounts which are like items that affect your total as a whole or the price of specific other items.

Re: Square Terminal

#96

Post by tdeck »

dawhizkid wrote: post #69
floatingatoll wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CVS Pharmacy recently gave up on a years-long initiative to convince Americans to pay with QR codes. It seems market-appropriate, in light of that total failure, to have reservations about adding camera hardware to a cash register.

AFAIK Starbucks' own app represents a sizable percentage of mobile payments in the U.S. and is QR-code based. I don't think Square should take cues from one random merchant's failure with QR-code payments to decide whether or not it will take off in the future. Also I assume Square has ambitions to expand globally and in doing needs to shake off a western bias when it comes to payments.

Before that Square had a consumer payment solution (Square Wallet) using QR codes at Starbucks. It was supported at every starbucks location but never saw enough consumer adoption. They really tried, really. Really.

Re: Square Terminal

#97

Post by dawhizkid »

floatingatoll wrote: post #94
dawhizkid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Starbucks' own app represents a sizable percentage of mobile payments in the U.S. and is QR-code based. I don't think Square should take cues from one random merchant's failure with QR-code payments to decide whether or not it will take off in the future. Also I assume Square has ambitions to expand globally and in doing needs to shake off a western bias when it comes to payments.

CVS just paid $69 billion dollars to buy a health insurer. Calling them a “random merchant” considerably underestimates both their leverage over, and in general their relevance to, the payment processing industry. EDIT: Square’s 2017Q4 net revenue is about $600 million dollars, CVS’s 2017Q4 net revenue is about $48 billion dollars. Assuming the retail 2.5% transaction fee, CVS paid $1.2 billion dollars of credit card…

CVS’s main business is not their retail business but their Pharmacy Benefit Manager biz which they share a duopoly for, which is a b2b business and nothing to do with the CVS you or I see. To take 2.5% of their revenue and assume it’s all consumer retail transactions is just completely wrong.

Re: Square Terminal

#98

Post by Slartie »

techsupporter wrote: post #17
adamtulinius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You prefer strangers running away with your credit card?

I suspect a lot of comfort with what happens with credit cards in the United States comes from people believing that their card issuer will simply handle the problem if any fraudulent or merely unauthorized charges appear. There's no risk from the card going out of sight if the card is useless because the card issuer will reverse charges upon request. (Moving to chips, even with signature, is supposed to alleviate th…

You are probably right, but that comfort comes at a price, and the price can be seen right there in the original article: 2.6% + 10 cent credit card payment overhead.

And that is considered "cheap"! By contrast, in the European Union there's a cap of 0.3% on credit card interchange rates and 0.2% on debit. Of course that's just the raw interchange fee; a small merchant has to pay more than that to its card processor, but there are all-inclusive, Square-like offers for debit card processing fees below 1% for small merchants, and larger ones manage to keep both debit and credit processing cost way below 1%.

So the "comfort" of being able to hand over your credit card to someone who takes it out of view and possibly does unauthorized stuff with it increases prices of all the stuff you buy by roughly 2-3%.

Re: Square Terminal

#99

Post by taejo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #83
spc476 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Chili's (an American chain restaurant) they have these payment devices on each table. I can't stand them. First, they take up space on the table that can get quite crowded with all the plates and glasses that tend to accumulate during the meal. Second, they play constant ads (great, now each table can have a TV! What a wonderful distraction). Third, I've experienced about a third of the time, the device isn't work…

> waitron [1] Or, if you don't want to sound like you are describing a robot using a term Merriam-Webster describes as “vaguely disparaging” [0], you could use the gender neutral term almost universally used in the industry, “server”. [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/waitron

Thanks. In South Africa "waitron" is standard, and I hate it, and most people from outside the country just have a "wut" reaction. "Server" is much better.

Re: Square Terminal

#100

Post by DominikD »

spilk wrote: post #87
peterwwillis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's embarrassing for Americans because they're squeamish. They have to leave a tip, and if the server is doing the payment right there, you have to actually face them when leaving your embarrassingly inadequate tip. In the American model, payment is processed away from the customer and the bill is left for tip-adding after the server has left, to save the sensitibilities of cheap customers who tip badly.

The ideal solution here is to get rid of tipping, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime.

The ideal solution would be to tip adequately so that one doesn't have to be embarassed during payment.
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