What Square Charges for Tap to Pay on Your Phone
A tap on your phone is an in-person card payment on Square's sheet. Here is what that fee bucket costs, and what else you pay or do not.
You want to know the Square tap to pay fees before you take your first sale on a phone. Square's own pricing page gives the answer in a few lines. Tap to Pay on iPhone and Tap to Pay on Android take payments with just your phone. Those payments land in the same bucket as any other in-person card payment. There is no special fee for using your phone instead of a reader.
Which fee bucket a tap lands in
Square's pricing page sorts payments by how the card gets to you. Tap, dip, or swipe fees apply to in-person payments when a card is present. A customer tapping a card, or holding up Apple Pay or Google Pay, is a card-present sale. The page says tap, dip, or swipe accepts payments with tap, chip, or swipe functionality, with cards and digital wallets included.
So a wallet tap on your phone costs the same as a physical card tap. Both are in-person card payments. There is no extra charge for the contactless part, and none for using your phone as the reader.
What Square's page says about plans and monthly costs
Square's pricing page says processing fees vary based on the Square plan you choose. Square's pricing page says the monthly fee per location is $0, $49 or $149, and Square Plus and Square Premium charge it per location. Square's pricing page says with Square Free there are no monthly subscription costs, and you only pay processing fees when you take a payment.
Square's pricing page says its plans start at no cost and have no hidden fees or locked-in contracts. Square's pricing page says you can cancel or switch plans anytime. The page says businesses that process over $250,000 per year can talk to its team about custom pricing and processing fees.
The in-person card rates Square's page lists
For the tap, dip, or swipe bucket, Square's pricing page says in-person card payments run from 2.6% + 15¢ to 2.4% + 15¢, depending on the plan. Which plan carries which end of that range is set out on Square's pricing page.
Weigh the monthly fee per location against the rate on your own sales. Run both numbers against a real month of sales before you pick.
The page says you can accept every major card, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover, all for the same processing fees. You do not pay a different rate for a different card brand at the counter.
Other ways customers can pay at the same counter
Not every sale is a tap. Square's pricing page lists other payment types, and some cost more than the in-person card rate.
Manual entry or card on file payments cost 3.5% + 15¢. That is the bucket for phone orders typed in by hand. If a card number is typed in by hand, the sale lands here, not in the tap bucket.
Online and invoice card payments run from 3.3% + 30¢ to 2.9% + 30¢, depending on the plan. A payment through an invoice link you sent falls in this bucket, not the tap bucket.
Square's pricing page says Afterpay payments cost 6% + 30¢. Square's pricing page says EBT card payments for SNAP-eligible items cost 1.8% + 5¢.
Square's pricing page says cash or check payments are free. If a regular hands you bills, Square takes nothing out of that sale.
What Square's page says you do not pay for
Square's pricing page says you do not need to purchase hardware to take payments with Square. Your phone is enough to start. That is the whole appeal of tap to pay, and the page backs it up.
Every plan includes end-to-end encrypted payments, active fraud prevention, next day transfers, and offline payments. Those come with the plan rather than as add-on charges.
One extra cost to watch. The page says an additional fee applies to payments made on credit or debit cards issued outside of the United States. A tourist tapping a foreign card may cost you more than a local tap. The page does not put a number on that fee, so read the fine print there if you serve a lot of visitors.
Checking today's numbers on Square's own pricing page
Published prices change. The numbers above are what Square's pricing page states today, and a rate or a monthly fee could shift by the time you sign up. Before you commit to a plan, open Square's pricing page. Check the in-person card rate, the monthly fee for your plan, and the manual entry rate if you take phone orders.
If speed of payout matters to you, some processors charge extra to move money fast. See what instant payouts cost for how that works. Want to see how a tap compares across processors? A forty dollar sale at the counter walks through the same sale on several published price lists.