Square reviews
Square is rated 4.7 out of 5 across nearly 3,000 Capterra reviews, 4.5 on G2 and 4.3 across about 5,740 on Trustpilot. On the Better Business Bureau it sits at 1.06. That is not a typo and it is not noise: the two sets of reviewers are describing different halves of the same product, and the dividing line is whether Square has ever held your money.
This site
No merchant reviews yet
531 Google reviews
Constant. Square is the default small business processor, so it is discussed everywhere merchants gather.
What people say about Square elsewhere
Summaries of the public reviews and discussion on other platforms, written by our editors and dated. None of it is counted in the rating this site publishes.
Google reviews
Square on Google
Listed on Google as Square, One Post Plaza, Market Street, San Francisco
- 5 star
- 126
- 4 star
- 15
- 3 star
- 7
- 2 star
- 23
- 1 star
- 360
531 reviews on the San Francisco listing and a 2.1 average, which is the lowest of any major processor here. 360 of the 531 are one star against 126 five star. The complaints are not about the reader or the app, which is what Square is usually praised for. They are about what happens when something goes wrong: a fifteen percent reserve applied across all sales after the merchant won a fraudulent chargeback with evidence from the customer and the bank, an account deactivated on a legitimate business with no explanation, a website that would not load for customers and a support answer that it was the customer's problem. One reviewer counted four hours, two calls and thirteen transfers to get a non-answer after Square's own resubscribe flow downgraded their legacy plan. Weigh this against Square's ubiquity: millions of merchants use it without incident, and none of them write a Google review about it.
What reviewers flag
- Reserves after a dispute you wonA ten-year customer describes winning a chargeback reversal with evidence from the client and the bank, then having a fifteen percent reserve placed on all sales.
- Deactivation without a reasonRecurring across the one-star reviews, including from merchants in ordinary low-risk categories who describe no dispute history.
- Support that transfers rather than resolvesFour hours, two calls, thirteen transfers in one account. The complaint is not rudeness, it is that nobody owns the problem.
- Almost nobody reviews the thing that worksSquare's hardware and app are its strength and are barely mentioned here. A Google listing collects the tail, not the median.
In their words
I've used Square for almost 10 years. I had a client's bank fraudulently process a chargeback. I won the reversal and had evidence from the client and bank and they implemented a 15% reserve on all of my sales.
Read it in full
Four hours. Two calls. Thirteen transfers. That's what it took to get a non-answer from Square after their own resubscribe flow caused me to accidentally downgrade my legacy plan.
Read it in full
What Reddit says about Square
r/smallbusiness, r/restaurateur, r/ecommerce, r/SquarePOS_Users · Constant. Square is the default small business processor, so it is discussed everywhere merchants gather.
The best Square thread on Reddit is six years old and still the most useful thing written about it. In September 2019 Square moved from a flat 2.75 percent to 2.6 percent plus 10 cents, and r/smallbusiness worked out in public who that helps and who it hurts. A baker put it in one line: on a 100 dollar ticket the extra dime is invisible, on a 3 dollar sale it is not. A cafe owner calculated 1,200 dollars a year more, about a 26 percent increase, while an appointment-based business in the same thread stood to save 20 dollars a year. That is the whole Square pricing question, and it is still the right way to test a quote today. The rest of the record is what you would expect: threads comparing Square against Clover for restaurants, complaints that the website builder cannot be customised, and a steady flow of accounts deactivated or funds held, including a 2026 thread about fraudulent charges on Square Banking. The standing advice above a certain volume is blunt, which is that Square's convenience stops paying for itself and you should get quotes from processors who will negotiate.
What comes up in its favour
- Nobody argues about the hardwareEven critical threads treat the reader, the app and the ease of starting as settled. The disputes are about price at scale and about what support does in a crisis.
What keeps getting raised
- Your average ticket decides everythingFlat percentage plus a fixed 10 cents punishes small tickets. A cafe worked out 1,200 dollars a year more where an appointment business saved 20.
- Outgrow it and it costs youThe standing advice above a few hundred thousand a year: get quotes from processors who will negotiate, because Square will not.
- Deactivations and holdsA steady flow of threads about accounts closed or funds held, including recent ones about Square Banking rather than card processing.
Threads worth reading
- Square is changing their pricing model
r/smallbusiness · 24 September 2019 · 134 upvotes · 179 comments
179 comments of merchants doing the arithmetic on 2.6 percent plus 10 cents against a flat 2.75. The clearest treatment of average ticket size anywhere.
- Square is no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund
r/ecommerce · 13 March 2023 · 25 upvotes · 36 comments
Square keeping its fee on refunded orders, in line with PayPal and Stripe. Sellers looking for anyone who still returns the fee did not find one.
- Square vs Clover - anyone have experience with both?
r/restaurateur · 2 February 2021 · 13 upvotes · 67 comments
67 comments from restaurant operators who have run both, which is more useful than either company's comparison page.
- Do NOT use Square Banking
r/smallbusiness · 26 August 2026 · 17 upvotes · 19 comments
Fraudulent charges reported while still pending, and what happened next. Recent, and about the banking product rather than the processing.
Comments worth quoting
I'm a direct to consumer Baker. 100 dollar ticket and I wouldn't blink at a dime. 3.00 sale? I blink a lot.
Read it in full
One appointment based business stands to save about $20 per year. My cafe stands to cost $1200 per year more, There is no way I can justify that, for the services offered.
Read it in full
You're processing way too much revenue to still be on square. Find a couple local credit card processing reps and let them fight out rates.
Read it in full
Square reviews
Reviews submitted directly to this site by merchants who use Square, moderated before they appear. Separate from the Google and Reddit summaries above.
No merchant has reviewed Square here yet
Reviews are written by merchants who use the processor and are moderated before they appear.
Write the first reviewWhat the third-party review record shows
As of August 2026, Square holds about 4.7 out of 5 across nearly 3,000 Capterra reviews, 4.5 across more than 160 on G2, and 4.3 across roughly 5,740 on Trustpilot. The Better Business Bureau has it at 1.06 out of 5 with a heavy complaint volume behind it. Local news investigations have covered individual merchants waiting on held deposits, which is unusual for a payments company and tells you something about how the complaints escalate when messaging fails.
The pattern is consistent once you sort reviews by what they are about. Reviews of the product, meaning the register, the reader, the reporting, the ecosystem of add-ons, are strongly positive and there are thousands of them. Reviews of the account relationship, meaning risk decisions, holds, closures and support access, are strongly negative. Very few reviewers have experience of both, because most merchants never trigger a hold.
Independent reviewers who assess Square as a merchant account rather than as a point-of-sale system, including Merchant Maverick and Card Payment Options, have flagged the same hold-and-support pattern for years. It is a known characteristic of the aggregator model rather than a recent slip.
Themes across public reviews
Pros
- Signup takes minutes with no application or underwriting wait, which is why reviewers running a first business default to it
- The free point-of-sale software is good enough that reviewers running cafes and salons describe it as the reason they stayed
- Hardware, payments, reporting, invoicing, payroll and appointments come from one vendor, so reviewers stop integrating separate tools
- Flat published pricing with no monthly fee, which reviewers with irregular or seasonal volume name as the deciding factor
- Next-business-day deposits as standard, with same-day available, and reviewers say the schedule is reliable when nothing is flagged
- Reviewers consistently rate the reporting and the item library as better than what their previous terminal provider offered
Cons
- Fund holds are the most frequent complaint across every platform, triggered automatically by volume spikes, large tickets or refund patterns
- Phone support ends 90 days after signup, so account emergencies later on go through messaging with multi-week replies
- Reviewers describe inconsistent answers between support agents and no escalation path to anyone able to release a deposit
- Account closures happen with little warning for business types Square decides it will not serve, after the merchant has already built on it
- The flat rate is competitive at low volume and expensive once you are processing steadily, with no interchange-plus option
- Reviewers report that a single large transaction is enough to trigger a review, which penalises exactly the sale you wanted most
Who Square works for, by business type
The feature reviewers volunteer without being asked about is the loyalty program. Merchants running cafes, salons and small retail describe it as doing real work on repeat business rather than sitting unused in the dashboard, turning a card sale into a customer who comes back. It is one of the few built-in extras that shows up in positive reviews as a reason to stay rather than a line on a feature list.
How well Square lands also depends on how much you process. Lower-volume merchants say the paid tiers and premium tools are hard to justify until sales pick up, so the platform tends to earn its keep as a business grows rather than on day one. The free point-of-sale software is what carries the early stage, and the upgrades make sense once the volume is there to pay for them.
The tiered plans are built around specific trades, which is why the fit is narrower and better than a generic processor's. Retail shops, coffee shops, restaurants and appointment-led businesses such as spas and salons each get hardware and a workflow shaped for them, and reviewers in those categories rate Square higher than reviewers using it as a plain card reader. Restaurants comparing kitchen and floor workflows should still weigh it against Toast, which is built for that one trade.
The negative reviews cluster in two places. Fraud and chargeback handling is the first: merchants describe disputes decided against them and little visibility into why, which stings most on the large tickets. Support is the second, with long waits and answers that do not resolve anything, and the complaints get sharpest during a dispute or a held deposit, when waiting is the one thing a merchant cannot do. Go in expecting messaging-paced support rather than someone on the phone.
Put together, Square fits small to mid-sized businesses that sell in person, want a system staff can learn in an afternoon, and will actually use the loyalty and booking tools that come with it. The caveat is the same one the low BBB score reflects: dispute resolution and support responsiveness are where merchants say it falls short, so plan for them rather than being surprised by them.
What the review record will not tell you
Square is a payment aggregator, which means you are processing under its master merchant account rather than one underwritten in your name. That is why signup takes five minutes, and it is also why a hold can arrive without the conversation a dedicated merchant account would have had at underwriting. The trade is real and it is not disclosed in a star rating: you get instant access, and Square retains the right to reassess you at any point, with automated systems making the first call.
So the useful question is not whether Square is good, because a few thousand reviewers have settled that. It is whether your business can absorb a two-week deposit gap in the month it happens. If it cannot, either keep a second processor live or use a provider that underwrites you before you start. Helcim and Dharma Merchant Services both issue a dedicated merchant account with interchange-plus pricing, which costs you an application and gives you a relationship to appeal to when something is flagged.
What reviewers say in their own words
Excerpts below are quoted from reviews published on third-party platforms, with a link to each source. They are not reviews submitted to this site, and they do not count toward the Square rating shown above. All three are one-star reviews from the Better Business Bureau, which is a complaint channel, so they show the unhappy tail rather than the whole record. Capterra's roughly 3,000 reviewers average 4.7.
- "Square just canceled my account and refused to provide any explanation."
1 out of 5, Better Business Bureau, 12 August 2026 - "Deactivated me for no reason after 10 years with no recourse or ability to appeal."
1 out of 5, Better Business Bureau, 11 August 2026 - "Squares handling of my 75-year-old fathers account has been completely unacceptable"
1 out of 5, Better Business Bureau, 13 August 2026
Frequently asked questions
- Are these Square reviews verified?
- The figures on this page come from Capterra, G2, Trustpilot and the Better Business Bureau and were current as of August 2026. Capterra and G2 verify reviewers before publishing. Trustpilot is open, and the BBB publishes complaints alongside reviews, which is part of why its score is so much lower. None of these are reviews submitted to this site. Anything in the list above is a review a merchant wrote here and our moderators approved, rated on pricing, support, ease of use, features and reliability, and our own score is recomputed from those only rather than borrowed from a platform.
- Why is Square rated 4.7 on Capterra and 1.06 on the BBB?
- Because people arrive at the two sites for opposite reasons. Capterra and G2 are software directories where reviewers are describing a point-of-sale system they chose and use daily, and on that question Square genuinely is excellent. The Better Business Bureau exists to file complaints, so its Square page is almost entirely merchants whose funds were held or whose account was closed. Both ratings are accurate about what they measure. Neither is the whole picture, and quoting only one of them is how most Square reviews you will read online go wrong.
- What do Square reviewers complain about most?
- Fund holds, by a wide margin, and they are the most frequent complaint in the negative reviews on G2 and Capterra as well as on the BBB. Square's automated risk system reacts to a sudden jump in volume, an unusually large single transaction or an odd refund pattern by holding the deposit, and merchants report holds lasting days to weeks with no clear reason given. Second is support: phone support is available only for the first 90 days after you open the account, so the merchants most likely to need a human, the ones with a hold in month eight, are the ones who cannot get one. Third is cost at volume, where the flat rate stops being competitive.
- Can you reach Square by phone if your funds are held?
- Generally not, and this is the specific mechanism behind most of the anger in the low reviews. Square provides phone support during the first 90 days after account creation. After that, account issues including withheld funds and suspensions go through messaging and email, where reviewers describe multi-week response times, inconsistent answers between agents and no route to anyone empowered to release a deposit. If your business cannot survive a two-week gap in deposits, treat that as the deciding fact about Square rather than as a footnote, and keep a second way to take payment ready before you need it.
Be the first to review Square
Rate it on pricing, support, ease of use, features, and reliability. Reviews are moderated before they appear.