Square: Grow your business your way

Please introduce yourself and your company

Hey, I’m Bobbilee. I work in developer relations here at Square. I’ve been a software engineer and community organizer for the last 5 years. Here’s a recent video of me teaching developers how to use our In-App Payments SDK from a mobile app. https://youtu.be/watch?v=gnyVOETIaEA&t=4s

Square is a financial services, merchant services aggregation, and mobile payment company. We’re known for our hardware payments products and small business services, but we also have multiple APIs and SDKs that are free for developers to use.

Please tells us about Square APIs?

We have lots of APIs and SDKs for developers to choose from in languages including PHP, Java, .NET, Ruby, Python and Node.js. We also have SDKs that support in-app, online, and in-person payments. They are secure, reliable, and free to use with support in Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States...with more to come. You can use our APIs to manage and run nearly all aspects of business including customer, product, inventory, and employee management.

Why would people choose it over existing options.

Square processes billions of transactions annually and you can take payments everywhere. We support online, mobile, and in-person payments. Also, we don’t just take payments, we provide a platform for growing your business that’s used by millions of sellers. We also differentiate from other payment APIs / embedded payment forms in the way we handle compliance. We are the merchant of record on behalf of Square sellers, which allows for enhanced security and PCI compliance. This simplifies the life of developers as they don't need to worry about anything but embedding our payment forms or other SDKs into their app.

Links to documentation, support, github:

Documentation - https://developer.squareup.com/docs/

Support - Join our Slack community Slack

Github - github.com/square

Pricing? or Free?

Free to use APIs. Transaction fees for Square payment APIs and SDKs are based on the transaction type and Square payment solution used. And those are listed here.

How are companies using your API?

1. Brushfire (Online Payments, In-App and In-Person via Reader SDK) https://squareup.com/us/en/developers/case-studies/brushfire

• Brushfire’s clients are always looking for new ways to engage attendees and increase sales at events. They needed a way to make all these purchases happen seamlessly.
• Brushfire was able to create a cohesive payments and reporting solution for the first time, by integrating Square for in-person, in-app, and online payments.
• The first client to leverage the omnichannel solution, Brushfire built on Square’s platform and saw a 22% lift in re-registrations at their largest event of the year.
• Brushfire now offers their Event App to organizations through Square’s App Marketplace.

2. Acuity Scheduling (Online Payments and In-Person Payments via Reader SDK)

Acuity Scheduling acts like a personal assistant for your bookings and integrates seamlessly with Square to accept payments anywhere – whether it’s online or in person.

The Acuity mobile app accepts payments via Square readers. https://help.acuityscheduling.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003981512-Accepting-payments-through-Square-readers-via-the-Acuity-mobile-app

3. The Cut (In-App Payments) - https://squareup.com/us/en/developers/case-studies/thecut

• The Cut was looking for a new payments provider that their barbers could trust.
• They started by integrating Square In-App Payments SDK and quickly got up and running with a beautiful payment form, customized to look native to their app.
• In-app payments have grown by 400% since they migrated their payments to Square.
• Next, they’re excited about integrating Reader SDK so barbers can offer card-present payments through theCut — powered by Square.

What are some of the growth / marketing tactics your company is using to attract developers?

We are doing some paid advertising, well-produced youtube videos, have an active engineering blog, are sponsoring conferences and podcasts, running workshops and speaking at conferences and meetups.

Are you going to offer an API for the Cash App?

At this time we do not have an API for Cash App.

I love Square investment in Bitcoin, are there any plans to offer Bitcoin related APIs such as a Square maintained public node, or maybe an API to extract data from the BTC blockchain?

We currently don’t have a Bitcoin API and can’t actually discuss any plans regarding anything that isn’t already officially released.