Square Terminal Payments FAQ
What are my fees?
Contactless, swiped or inserted chip credit cards and swiped mag-stripe credit card payments processed through the Square Terminal have a 2.65% fee.
Interac Debit cards are processed at 0.75% + $0.07 per tap or insert and have no other associated fees.
If you have a custom processing rate on your Square Account, that rate will apply to all transactions on your Square Terminal.
There are no fees for recording cash, cheque or gift certificate payments.
There are no monthly or hidden fees for credit card processing. All fees are deducted before funds are transferred to your linked bank account.
Note: Processing fees are deducted before each transfer and cannot be charged on a monthly basis. You can view your total fees on a monthly basis from your online Square Dashboard.
Contactless Payments
Contactless payments describe the act of paying without touching the payment device. NFC (Near-Field Communications) is a technology that allows for contactless payments. Using radio frequency, NFC allows devices (e.g. smartphones) to wirelessly communicate at close range to do things like process payments. Apple Pay and Google Pay are both types of contactless payments.
When you are ready to accept a contactless payment, tap the ‘Charge’ button on Terminal. If you have Default to Customer Checkout enabled, the contactless symbol will appear on a blue screen. If not, tap on ‘Customer Checkout’ to enable contactless payments. Have your customer hold a contactless device or card near the contactless symbol to start a contactless payment.
If you do not see the blue contactless symbol screen after tapping charge, you can adjust your Customer Checkout options.
Yes, they’re just as secure as accepting chip cards. In some cases because of additional verification methods (like Touch ID with Apple Pay), contactless payments can be even more secure. Learn more in
Square’s comprehensive guide to Apple Pay.
Insert Payments
Yes, Interac debit payments can be accepted by inserting, tapping or swiping your customer payment method on your Square Terminal.
Chip and PIN card payments require additional security steps to transfer and verify chip data. It only takes seconds to complete a chip card transaction when it’s inserted into the EMV card slot.
Yes, you’ll need to leave the chip card in the Terminal chip card slot until the transaction is complete. You’ll see a confirmation message when it’s time to remove the card.
If the card has a chip on it, you’ll need to insert it into the chip card slot. You can only swipe magstripe-only cards or faulty chip cards. If your Square Terminal cannot read the chip after three attempts, you’ll be prompted to swipe the chip card.
Manage Payments
- From the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen, tap Transactions.
Select the payment you’d like to refund > Issue Refund. - Tap Select All Items to refund the entire sale, select the specific items you’d like to refund or tap Amount to refund a specific dollar amount.
- Tap Refund.
When issuing an itemized refund, the amount being refunded will reflect any applicable taxes (e.g. Sales Tax) and discounts for the selected item(s).
For Custom Amount transactions, you’ll have the option to refund any dollar amount up to the total amount of the sale.
You can reprint a payment receipt from your Square Terminal. To do so, follow these steps:
- From the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen, tap Transactions.
- Locate and tap the payment.
- Tap New Receipt > Paper Receipt.
Note: To find the transaction in your history, you can scroll through your transaction list or search by manually entering the card number, inserting, tapping or swiping the card or payment device.
Note: Reprinting a receipt on the Square Terminal is not available when the Square Terminal is connected to Point of Sale as a customer display. Learn more about connecting Square Terminal to Point of Sale.
The Square Terminal requires an internet connection at all times to function properly. If your internet connection becomes interrupted or temporarily unavailable, you can enable Offline Mode to accept swiped card payments as a backup.
Keep in mind, you cannot accept Interac Debit card payments in Offline Mode.
To enable Offline Mode:
- Tap More from the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen.
- Tap Settings > Checkout > Offline Mode.
- Toggle Allow Offline Mode to on.
- Review the information and then tap Allow Offline Mode.
- To set a limit for card transactions taken offline, enter an amount next to Per-Transaction Limit. This limit automatically defaults to $100 when Offline Mode is enabled and the maximum per-transaction limit is $50,000.
Any transactions accepted while in Offline Mode will be processed when you regain connectivity. If a payment is not processed within 24 hours, it will expire and the funds will not be captured from your customer.
When operating in Offline Mode, there is additional risk with any payments you accept. Square is not responsible for any loss due to declined cards, expired payments taken while offline or for chargebacks. In addition, Square cannot contact any customers on your behalf should a payment be declined or expire when taken in Offline Mode.
Yes. If your customer is enrolled in your business’
Square Loyalty program, they can redeem any earned rewards during checkout. Once your customer inserts their payment card to your Terminal, any rewards that can be redeemed will be reflected on your device’s screen that you can show to your customer. As soon as rewards are chosen and redeemed by the customer, you can continue through the checkout process as normal.
Note: In order for the rewards prompt to automatically appear on your device, the customer must be completing the transaction with the payment card that is linked to their Loyalty profile. Learn more about linked payment cards and how customers can redeem their rewards in our Support Centre.
Manage Orders
Yes. With Square Terminal you can view and filter your orders by status or type, update order progress, update tracking information and have your orders printed from the Square Terminal’s built-in printer.
You can learn more about managing orders on Square Terminal in our Support Centre.