Known for its mobile reader, Square now offers merchants a sales system they can actually nail down. Built to use an iPad, its recently debuted Business in a Box for Square Register provides a complete point of sale system that includes everything the average retailer needs to manage commerce, all for a starting price of $299, not counting the purchase of the tablet.
“Square Register has always made it easy for businesses to begin accepting payments and run their business beautifully. Business in a Box is an initiative to replace hardware on the counter-top,” Jesse Dorogusker, Square’s Vice President of Register, told the Wall St. Journal. “What most businesses already have is a strange collection of dinosaurs and calculators, and this is an easy replacement for all those things.”
The package includes two Square readers, a swiveling iPad holder that’s secure and counter friendly, and a cash drawer. A Star Micronics TSP143L Receipt Printer is available for an additional $300, but as PC World points out, the same printer is available through Newegg for $260. Aside from the Square reader, the components are sold by third party merchants but are wirelessly connected and compatible with Square Register.
An iPad app that complements the Square Reader, Square Register is a photo-powered registry that inventories products for easier checkout. The app also enables merchants to track customer loyalty, which items sell the best, and which hours the store is the busiest.
The package makes it easy for merchants to establish a point of sale system quickly and easily. Previously, merchants using Square had to figure out how to prop up their iPad as well as secure it, and had to provide their own cash drawer.
And businesses save money over traditional commerce systems. Square charges one fee of 2.75 percent per transaction, or a flat $275 monthly fee for large vendors. Unlike a traditional cash register, a merchant using Square just needs to take the iPad home to tally sales metrics in the comforts of their own living room. Plus, most cash register systems are also not compatible with Evernote, Documents To Go, or TableTop Translator, which makes Square’s approach all the more tempting.
Processing payments over a $10 billion annual run rate, Square serves over 3 million businesses and people.
So far, the Business in a Box package only works with the iPad, though it may be open to Android platforms in the future.
“We’re huge Android fans, we have a killer Android team, it’s a first-class citizen with awesome technology,” Dorogusker told the Wall St. Journal. “But there isn’t a single Android tablet you can name like the iPad, and that says something about distribution. But we have no religion when it comes to that.”
Merchants can sign up for the point of sale package here.