Payments startups Square wants to provide more ways for sellers to make more money, by diversifying its products and making it easier to add value to customers. With the holidays right around the corner, it’s enabling Square Register users to sell physical gift cards for the first time.
Since launching Square Register the company has been adding new features, trying to gradually integrate more deeply into a seller’s business. That includes stuff like inventory, invoices, analytics, scheduling, customer feedback. Gift cards are just one more small piece that Square can provide to make Register a one-stop shop for managing a business.
Starting today, sellers who use Square for their point-of-sale system will now be able to offer, redeem, and track gift cards directly through Square Register. That means being able to sell cards directly to users and keep track of all the analytics around customer usage of those cards all on a single system.
Square gift cards will cost $1.50 a piece, making them affordable to sellers without any subscription, redemption, or transaction fees associated. They can be ordered directly through the Square Dashboard, and sellers can either choose from pre-selected gift card designs or upload their own custom designs to make them fit the company’s brand.
The sale value of the gift card is automatically deposited into a seller’s account at sale, so they don’t have to wait for cards to be redeemed to get the cash value of the card. Whenever a card is swiped, the balance gets automatically updated in Register, and cards can be reloaded whenever.
Anyway, with gift cards Square hopes to move into a huge $100 billion-plus market. And it’s one more way that the company can diversify the product set it offers to sellers. As it moves from being a pure payment processor to the brains behind their operations, every little bit counts.