Feature Request: Donation option

[larchard]

The title of this thread has been edited by a Square Moderator from the original: "Tap to donate (again)"

I've just signed up to Square and bought a reader (potentially five more) as a trial for what seems a common application. I see from previous forum traffic that this has been acknowledged by Square as a very desirable feature for quite a few years, but there's seemingly no action. 

Background: Our band is doing a gig for charity - Sloop Groggy Dogs at Bedford Corn Exchange on April 25th if anyone here can tolerate sea shanties 😉 

We want to provide an option for a 'retiring collection' i.e. give an extra £10 as people leave. We'll have about 700 people leaving the venue by two doors. They'll hopefully be quite motivated to donate, but any delay will encourage them to divert their funds to a local bar on a Friday night.

I'm guessing the best we can do is...

• have as many operators as we can
• in some sort of identifiable uniform (to give donors confidence)
• with the Android / iPhone POS app
• maybe linked to readers
• with preset donation items
• and any optional steps disabled
• doing their utmost to minimise the cycle time.

Does anyone have tips for us?

The Square product team would be very welcome to come (armed with terminals and a healthy donation to RNLI) to gather real-world user experience.

Cheers

[Twiggy]

When you say signed up to square - do you mean your account has been approved - business recognised?  I see you have a web page -  no merch or shop linked to it - and the ticket sales are being handled by the Bedford corn exchange. I’m linking @tranguyen  to see if they might be able to advise - help put you on the right path. Maybe even a beta linked product ….  There might be something on the roadmap for this functionality and this could be a great add on… 

Square's card readers can be used for accepting donations, but they are not specifically designed as self-serve donation solutions. While Square offers a range of payment options, including contactless tap, and can be used to collect donations, it requires a user to manually enter each transaction at checkout.  You could create an Item  item with different variables but you’d have to click new sale, tap the item, select the amount, click add, click review sale, click charge and then click tap to pay on iPhone /android.  This is very long winded and you’ll create a hold up fire risk.    

What your asking for is not currently available with Square https://givealittle.co/products/tap-to-pay    

Is available with a stripe account.

[larchard]

Thanks for your quick response and help.

As you said, Corn Exchange are handling the tickets and the good news is that they're practically sold out - Yay!

Nor are we selling merch yet. The process of setting up for card donations to the charities we're supporting has set us thinking about doing so for future events though.

We're currently awaiting verification to link to our band's bank account. However, so that I could experiment with the app, I have also signed-up under my own sole-trader business and the bank account verified within a few seconds. Yesterday I created some pre-set donations in the Library and also some "Quick Amounts" for the Keypad entry. The NFC antenna on my phone is a bit hit-and-miss but with the external reader I can achieve a reasonable cycle time.

We certainly don't want to hold anyone up on their way out of the venue. I can imagine that any delay will mean more people skip the opportunity to donate, so I'm certainly interested to hear of beta facilities or any other tips to speed up the process.

Cheers

[tranguyen · Accepted solution]

Thanks for tagging me in @Twiggy! 

Your gig sounds like it'll be lots of fun @larchard — I wish I live nearer (but maybe I'll catch you on a tour?)! And also hate to be the bearer of bad news but @Twiggy is correct. Unfortunately at the moment, Square does not have an optimal setting for self-serve donation, similar to what you'd see on SumUp machines where you can configured a preset amount and people can just tap and go. There is no active or upcoming beta for this feature either. 

The closest to achieve this is what you've set up now, which is the quick amount. Within your Checkout settings in your Square Point of Sale app, you can enable Skip review sale and Skip receipt screen to speed it up. With these settingd enabled, someone would still need to have the phone in their hand > tap the quick amount > hold out the device for the audience to tap their card.

Alternatively, you can create a Square Payment Link to accept donations. When you create a payment link, there's an option to general a QR code which you can print out and display within the venue, so audience members can scan and choose to pay whenever they wish. One caveat is that the fee for payment link is1.4% + 25p for UK cards and 2.5% + 25p for non-UK cards. With the payment link, audiences will get to choose what they want to pay and there isn't a pre-set amount. 

Let me know if you have any other questions about setting up and I'll be happy to help! 

[Twiggy]

Just wondering what option you went with for tomorrow night? 

[larchard]

We've got family/friends with a reader each on their phones, set up with Quick Amounts of £5, £10 and £20, skipping Review and Receipt pages, off-line mode enabled in case of connection issues and all other payment types disabled. That should achieve a cycle time of under 10 seconds, but we have to be careful not to make errors because an incorrect amount takes more clicks to clear. My wife and daughter are getting competitive and made me work out how to filter the transaction report by device 😉

I'll let you know how we get on.

[Twiggy]

Well , Well done for sticking with Square.  I’ve used Square since 2015 - there’s a few UK / USA issues like spellings and Curb and Kerb side pick up They do listen especially if someone like me or @Sam_400º sees your post.  I trust you raise the roof and things go smoothly. You must report back -  I think you are the first to do this in the UK!  The RNLI is such a good cause ( I live in Suffolk - close to the river Orwell & sea ) Have a great night - I think you might deserve some free credits / free processing here hint @tranguyen @isabelle xx 

[Sam_400º]

It’s been a request for quite a while and don’t know why it’s not a feature yet 🙈

Another UK provider has an option and promotes it quite heavily for buskers, but their card reader has the payment price on it (so *has* to be clear what they’re paying). 

It’s also a great feature for the tipping/donation culture across the board. 

Hopefully one day 👍

[Sam_400º]

Oh - also @larchard @using tap to pay on your phone is super fast when people are using their mobile, but like you I’ve found cards can be a slower (seems like they need to be in perfect placement! 

[larchard]

Unfortunately we won't be at the 2025 Harwich Festival which might have been convenient for you @Twiggy - We played there last October and only local bands do consecutive years.

However - We're at Old Leigh Shanty Festival, a little over ten leagues ⛵ down the coast at Southend, in less than two weeks on Saturday May 17th. Please say hello if you come.

[larchard]

Reporting back. We had a full house at Bedford Corn Exchange and had a fantastic night - I think even the audience enjoyed it 😉

Our six volunteers downloaded and installed the POS app. Then I generated a profile and sent them each a device code. That meant their phones were preconfigured with Quick Amounts and the correct settings to speed up transactions.

On the night, things got a bit hectic and we only had 5 minutes to connect and explain the readers to the volunteers and they effectively got just 1 minute of 'training' because each reader decided it needed a firmware update. Even so they achieved 70 tap payments in 8 minutes with 6 readers as the audience left. Their feedback was that we got the number of readers right. The 'technical' cycle time of about 10 seconds wasn't limiting, but had there been fewer readers, some potential donors would have walked past.

I also put a payment link QR code on A4 posters either side of each door and some on slips of paper to hand out to anyone who had card difficulties, but only one person donated by that method.

We don't have the numbers yet for ticket sales minus venue costs, but the collection raised £875 via the card readers and £1300 in cash into four buckets. The demographic of this audience was more toward 'cash carrying' than most events we play.

Very interestingly, quite a few people were disappointed that the "Slooper Trooper" T-shirts we had printed for the stage crew and helpers were not available for sale. Now we have the card readers, I think we might well be on the way to having a merch stall - no doubt shortly thereafter a LearJet.

Thank you all for your support - My first experience of payment tech has been surprisingly enjoyable.

[Twiggy]

That was fantastic. Well done. 

[Eagleheightswf]

Jumping on this as I can see there are hundreds of requests for the same thing. 

This would make such a difference to our small non profit animal sanctuary. 

PLEASE square add this feature. If you can add a 'tip' why can't they add a donation? 

Surely it's a couple of minutes job to add this feature? 

To be clear - I am asking for the option for customers at POS to be able to tap Yes/No for either round up as a donation OR add a donation of an amount such as £1. 

Come on @Square you would be assisting charities all over the world! Does that not count as corporate social responsibility points for your organisation?