erica

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freelance illustrator, designer, and idk buncha stuff

@kuraine's wife

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ascari
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ok i'm gonna ask this here because i asked it on twitter and that site is actually fucking dead lol but

If you're an artist alley-type or operate a table at cons and stuff, what do you use for wireless/card payments? I'm currently looking to get a thing for it and universally people seem to use Square and the Square Reader but there's gotta be an alternative, right? I kinda don't want to use a Jack Dorsey product if I can avoid it but the closest competitors (Stripe and Clover) only seem to have options for like, businesses and have dedicated devices that might be a little Too Serious (and costly) for me.

Anyone have recommendations for alternatives? Or is it really just a Reader or nothing.

also I am not American so Venmo or Cash App does not work for me


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in reply to @erica's post:

I do tarot reading, and in the Before Times I did it in a new age shop. The Square dongle that connects to phones was free, but it requires a headphone jack... which means I can no longer use it, lol, unless I dig out my old phone as, like, a business terminal. It looks like the free offer dongle is the same.

Of course it's going to depend on where you live, but you can typically register a Stripe account as a sole proprietorship and doesn't require you to have a registered business to open an account. It's worth researching them in your locale.

I've always used the square reader. I've got an old ipad mini that still has a headphone jack. The last time I worked a booth for someone else, they had the newer reader to accept cards with chips that used bluetooth and that worked just fine. If you hear about an alternative, would love to hear it before I run a table next year (maybe?)

I found this about taking payments without code, but it only shows the iOS app and that's US-only. Android should support more countries, but I'm unsure whether the Android Stripe Dashboard app supports this or not.

It was pretty janky but I used Kofi, I just put up a sign with a QR code and then people showed me they'd paid on their phone screen. It wouldn't be ideal for high volume stuff, but this was a zine fair so it was mainly a fallback option.

we had the square terminal (older iPad one) and the square reader (headphone jack) and both were always the only reasonable option whenever we looked, they served us well for years.

fwiw banks like TD offer an actual wireless SIM card enabled payment terminal like the ones you see on a restaurant, but it’s a lot more involved than just buying a chip/card reader at staples and a few minutes later accepting payments so we never tried it

oh boy, yeah, i'm sorry, but when it comes to alternatives to square, you really just got cash and PayPal POS (paypal makes a few square-like devices seen here: https://www.paypal.com/us/business/pos-system/card-reader). i mean technically you might be able to set up your own custom system using other hardware/software but that would be an enormous expense for not any real benefit.

so yeah unfortunately this is one place where you just might need to find a compromise and get a square terminal so that you can get paid and not cause your customers a huge headache. i have a square terminal and it is by far the easiest part of my con selling experience

My partner uses a Square reader for their art selling at various events too. The only other pin pad/chip reader/NFC type POS terminal brand I know of offhand is Moneris but I've only seen their hardware in fixed location retailers.

Clover is somewhat common around my area (michigan). Just checked and they have a $50 tap to pay reader, no monthly charge.

Edit, sorry missed you were looking for something outside of clover. Payanywhere, shopify and paypal also have devices too. I dont think ive seen anything outside of paypal/venmo/cashapp that lets you take payments without a device. Imo the clover $50 reader is what id go with but thats just me.