Hi everyone! I'm new to Square and I want to accept credit card payments online.
The problem I'm having is that I want the customer to choose a custom amount they wish to pay, but every method presents some form of difficulty.
I thought it would be easy enough to create a checkout link and select "Allow buyer to set the price." But there are three problems with this approach:
1. If the customer begins entering a dollar amount but tries to edit it before clicking the Checkout button, a red error message appears: "Donation limit exceeded. Total donations must be less than $1,000 CAD within a 24 hr period." This message is confusing, because the displayed amount is $0.00, which is clearly not exceeding $1,000.
2. The wording of the above error message is misleading because the intention is not to request a donation. I'm a business, not a charity, and it is important to avoid giving customers the impression that a donation is being solicited. I did make sure to chose the "Collect a payment" option (not "Accept a donation") when creating the checkout link.
3. When the customer eventually gets to the checkout page, there is an "Add coupon" field at the top. But I do not use coupons, and seeing this leaves my customer feeling upset that they didn't have a coupon and maybe paid too much. Unfortunately, It seems impossible to remove this field — it is apparently forced whether I use coupons or not.
So I gave up on checkout links and looked into sending every customer an invoice instead. But this still doesn't allow the customer to enter a custom amount at the time of payment. I have to specify the amount when I create the invoice, and that is the exact amount the customer must pay when paying the invoice.
I wouldn't mind sending an invoice with a dollar amount if the customer can modify it to a higher or lower amount at their discretion, but aside from asking for a tip (which isn't the intention here) it doesn't seem to be an option.
Basically I want the ability for a customer to send credit card payments, in any amount of their choosing, and the amount is not always known by me in advance. This should be simple and straightforward.
The reason I'm trying out Square is so that I can also accept physical card payments at the time the service is provided (I'm a wedding officiant). I've been accepting credit cards online through PayPal for many years, and with PayPal the customer can easily choose their own payment amount.
Has anyone else found a customer-friendly way to do this with Square?
