[sithadmin]

American merchants doing low customer volume (e.g. small shop, cafe, restaurant) are usually locked into using something like a terminal from First Data (~$150-200 USD minimum for the most basic device) and something in the ballpark of 2.2% to 2.7% in fees for every transaction. People paying the lower rate are doing over $50k per month in transaction volume.

Compare that to competitors in the space like Square, which costs ~$300 USD and charges ~2.6% plus a flat 10 cents per transaction.

If you're not doing over $50k in volume per month and already have an iPhone...you might as well just use the Square app and take NFC payments on your phone instead of investing in the reader (assuming you're operating in a space where consumers will readily have NFC payments ready).

[lkbm]

I suspect the real benefit is situations where the seller comes to you. A cafe can have an additional piece of equipment sitting on the counter for taking payments, but if you're a handyman or something, going to someone's house, being able to take payment on the spot using the phone already in your phone seems like a valuable convenience.

[alwillis]

And wait until you can accept bitcoin payments without having to install a bitcoin wallet: https://9to5mac.com/2021/12/28/comment-tim-cook-said-apple-i....

[snotrockets]

The basic square hardware is about 1/5 the price you listed, but I don't think it's the price, but the effort – filling a form in the app vs waiting for a package to arrive in the mail, and setting up some extra hardware (What I must wonder is what Apple charges Square for this feature)

[sithadmin]

It has probably been 5 years since I've encountered the most basic Square reader in the wild (the $10 magstripe one), and I can think of a single time in the past two years I've encountered the cheap one you're referencing (which is why I forgot about it in the first place).

[echelon]

I see these $50 ones all the time:

https://squareup.com/shop/hardware/us/en/products/chip-credi...

Plus if your customer drops this, they're not breaking your expensive iPhone screen.

[sithadmin]

Yeah, those. I basically never see them anymore. There was a short time where they seemed pretty common, but I honestly only remember seeing one once in the last two years, at a farmers' market booth. All the vendors I frequent that used to use that have either upgraded to the full-function $300 Square terminal, or moved to using other solutions like Toast or Clover.