Many years ago my husband and I ran a business where we had a credit card processing terminal. It was a good size box that needed electricity and a phone line. Cost a monthly equipment fee, plus processing and transaction fees. It was quite nice to have even with the fees as it helped our business grow.

A few years ago they came out with the smartphone and we were able to incorporate the Intuit credit card reader which connects to Quickbooks. We got one of those before anyone else. I used intuit without any problems for many years even after square came out with their credit card processor. Why try something new if what you’ve got works just fine?

About a year or so ago, PayPal came out with a credit card processor right around the time that the Intuit card reader stopped functioning due to an update. Because I already used PayPal on my website I went ahead and I got that card reader because I wanted to keep everything in one basket.

Over the course of a couple of years of doing tradeshows every weekend I met a lot of vendors who were using the Square credit card processor and so I started asking them why they chose Square over PayPal or Intuit, their answers shocked me.

  • Square’s processing fee was less than PayPal.
  • Square provided a register and actual terminal that you could use at a store.
  • There was a receipt printing feature
  • It works even when there is no data service
  • and then there was the clincher…
  • Square provides an e-store online!

You can not only put your inventory with pictures and descriptions and reviews and price differences and shipping and tax, but they do all of that and provide an online page for you. The emailed receipts are so amazing!

It’s one online page. It has all of your information in one place. It cannot be customized or categorized or organized (yet). You can’t have more than one page. I couldn’t break up my books between children books and chapter books but still it was an all in one place ecommerce transactions that did not take you away from that page to process the transaction. I liked that.

Over the course of the last few weeks I’ve also discovered it processes the transactions faster and deposits the money quicker. They deposit my credit card processing from Saturday and Sunday on Monday morning not Tuesday or Wednesday (3 day wait for PayPal and Intuit).

I’ve been working on a new website platform one with which was able to take my  e-store and convert it into an ecommerce store on my website with category breakdown. I am very happy.

I have absolutely no idea why I waited as long as I did to become a square customer.

So, if you are an exhibitor or vendor, and you are looking to do a show and you need to take credit card payments get Square even if you don’t have a smartphone you could still get the register.

Those are my two cents. I am not a paid sponsor of Square, just a happy customer. I hope you too find this helpful.

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