Square Terminal Payments FAQs
What are my fees?
Contactless or chip and PIN payment cards and swiped magnetic stripe card payments processed through the Square Terminal have a 1.75% fee plus VAT.
If you have a custom processing rate on your Square Account that is lower than 1.75% + VAT for card present payments, that rate will apply to all transactions on your Square Terminal.
There are no fees for recording cash or cheque payments. Payments made by eGift Card incur a fee of 1.4% + 25c plus VAT per transaction for EU cards and 2.9% + 25c plus VAT for UK or non-EU payment cards.
There are no monthly or hidden fees for payment 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 Communication) 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, tap Confirm & Pay and 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 and PIN 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.
Inserted Payments
Chip and PIN card payments require additional security steps to transfer and verify chip data. It will take around 2 seconds to complete a chip and PIN card transaction when it’s inserted into the EMV card slot.
Yes, you’ll need to leave the chip and PIN card in the Terminal chip and PIN 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 need to insert it into the chip and PIN card slot. You can only swipe magnetic only Visa, Mastercard or American Express cards or faulty chip and PIN cards. If your Square Terminal cannot read the chip after three attempts, you will be prompted to swipe the chip and PIN card.
Manage Payments
- From the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen, tap Transactions.
2.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 euro amount.
- Tap Refund.
When issuing an itemised refund, the amount being refunded will reflect any applicable taxes (e.g. VAT) 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 card.
- 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.
Yes. With Offline Mode, you can accept Chip and PIN card payments when your internet service is temporarily unavailable. Offline payments are processed automatically when you reconnect your device to the internet, and may be declined if not processed within 24 hours. Learn how to process payments in Offline Mode on your Square Terminal.
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.