Square moves into eCommerce and Point of Sale transactions with new APIs

Mobile payments provider Square, has today announced a new way for businesses to process transactions, introducing new APIs for eCommerce and Point of Sale.

The idea is to simplify the process of transactions from all sources for businesses. Square has been focusing on smaller one-to-one transactions with their credit and debit card readers for a while now, this step towards a more wholistic solution allows them to branch out.

The APIs are available to anyone for free, with Square simply charging a flat 2.2% processing fee for each eCommerce transaction, while 1.9% is charged for each point of sale transaction.

To simplify for businesses, the APIs are being offered by popular do-it-yourself website building companies like BigCommerce, Weebly, Ecwid, WooCommerce, Magento and Wix. New or existing customers are able to simply add it in. Businesses are also able to add the new Point of Sale API to software running on existing Android or iOS point of sale devices.

Square’s Australian Country Manager, Ben Pfisterer said of the launch

It’s more common than ever for businesses of any size to sell their products or services online and in-person, so having a fully integrated omni-channel system gives them a powerful advantage. With Square, businesses can now accept payments through any channel.

Just like with the Square debit and credit readers, businesses can then track all their transactions in one place through the Square Dashboard. Mr Pfisterer said this gives businesses ‘a single, holistic view of their business, which vastly reduces the complexity of having to navigate numerous, disparate systems’.