When we switched from our old merchant service provider to Square for payment processing, we already had a square stand/ipad set up that we were using as a POS and we bought the Square Terminal under the impression that, similar to other POS + payment machine set ups, we could send a transaction from the Square stand, to the Square Terminal. We soon learned that's not possible, and so have continued to to use the POS for staff to punch in transactions, and the Square Terminal to process payments as custom amounts corresponding to the given POS transaction.
We're a small cafe on a university campus and we do this because:
- Each staff works very few hours per week (being students) and they are all used to using the ipad POS
- Sales are much faster to punch in on the ipad
- Square's chip & contactless reader wouldn't really allow for effective tipping. Our staff & Square Stand are behind plexiglass. and we don't want to have to ask every customer what they would like to tip
The agent I spoke to back in September didn't really have any solutions for us, and so we're doing it as I described above.
Our main goals being to minimize transaction time, as well as steps involved, and to facilitate customer tipping, we're making it work but.. again, seems a bit silly that in offering both a POS system and a payment processing machine... there's no functionality to send transactions from on to the other.
