When I was growing up cash was king…and I guess in some instances cash still is…but most people you encounter these days live and die by plastic cards. Unlike cash or checks, you need a middle-man to crack open the shell and scoop out the gooey-goodness of payments made with plastic.

In the past, having a credit card terminal was a cost prohibitive business model for most smol/mobile business people. Even if you were lucky and were able to get a bank with the “over the phone” processing, the fees were twice as high. Thus, most traveling merchants, like us artists and authors, had to deal with lugging boxes of real money around to our events. UGH. What a pain.

Now? All you need is a cell phone, computer, or iPad with internet access. Thanks to new tech/business ideas between 2009 and 2012 a whole new avenue of revenue opened up for the smol guys. Today I want to tell you why Square is better than any of the other processors you may come across.

• You don’t have to pay to have the account. There are no fees to exist. You can open your account and let it collect dust. You only have to pay fees when you make money. There are times I use the heck out of my account and other times it just sits there.

• They are an actual processing company and not a jack of all trades like SOME other companies that I won’t mention. They will back up their merchants on chargebacks and other issues and work with you to stop fraudulent chargebacks. The other guys are not pro-merchant, but I won’t get into all that!

• You can make contracts on your dashboard for FREE. I just discovered this the other day after paying for a contract service. You can even customize clauses and keep them on file to make new contracts.

• You can send estimates and invoices through the dashboard. You can attach contracts to said invoices.

• You can make gift cards.

• Free webstore. Although you have to package and ship your orders manually…you can set up a webstore and sell items without complicated software.

• If you grow, you can choose to pay for some of their bigger services and keep processing right along.

• Their charts are easy to use for tax time. Unlike SOME places who make it so dang hard to find the information.

• They have banking now and you can get to your money instantly with their checking account and debit card.

• You don’t pay extra to take Discover or Amex. All the major US credit cards are included with your account.

I think Square is so great, I even switched my family’s brick and mortar business to Square in 2019. Compared to the processor our bank had us using, we are saving between $200 and $500 a month in fees. And you best believe they charged you every. single. month. for. existing. Don’t stay with a processor who charges you for everything including something like sending a statement!

Convinced and wanna try it out? Visit this referral link HERE (both accounts could get free processing if you use the referral link and make sales, but this link won’t cost you anything to use. Feel free to just hit up the main website if you want to avoid the referral link! Just don’t worry about the name on the link being a business name. It’s really me!)