Square Announces Flat Rate Monthly Fee With No Swipe Or Transaction Charges

Mobile payment system Square on Thursday rolled out a new program that elimates its 2.75 percent per transaction fee and instead allows merchants to play a flat fee of just $275 per month.

The program is valid for company’s just starting out and those who do not surpass $250,000 in annual sales. Square has also restricted the monthly fee program to businesses who sell products below $400 each.

As The Verge points out, the program is best suited for businesses who handle $120,000 to $250,000 annually as they are most likely to save money based on their monthly sales thresholds when compared to the original 2.75 percent transaction fee.

There is no limit on the number of swipes that can be completed through the program.

The program works with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, and all traditional Square options are included with the flat monthly fee program.

New users still sign up for the Square program in the same way always made available. Simple sign up: Request a free square reader and link a bank account.

Square also points out that users can go over the initial transaction level of $250,000 and then just pay 2.75 percent per transaction.

To put those numbers in comparison, a company that does $500,000 every six months could pay $1650 for the first six months and then $6875 on the next $250,000 earned. As you can see, the savings of $5225 is rather huge.

The program is open for enrollment starting immediately, and all account that meet the requirements listed above can enroll in the flat rate plan.

Having worked in the credit card processing sector, I have to point out that there are ALWAYS catches, and here are Square’s:

Anything else I should know?

Pay with Square transactions also receive 0% processing and count against your limits. Manually entered transactions and cash recorded with Square do not count towards your limit. Manually-entered cards cost just 3.5% + 15¢ per transaction.