It's Hip to Be Square and profitable too

New Years Eve is tomorrow. My plans are to stay home, enjoy family, and get to bed at a timely hour.

It’s Hip To Be Square and profitable too.

The Square from Squareup.com is a free device that turns your Android, iPhone, or iPad into a credit card payment processing station. This is an excellent resource for musicians, consultants, and really anyone who wants a quick easy way to accept payments without lugging credit card processing equipment or worrying about connectivity.

How does it work?

Simple.. Sign up for a free account at squareup.com and they send you the card-reader for your device – FREE!. You link your Square account to your bank account and then download the free card reader software to your phone.

Start the software, plug-in your card reader, punch in a price to charge for your product or service, and then swipe the customer’s card through the card reader slot. Your customer signs for the purchase right on your mobile device and then you are prompted for their email address so Square can send them a receipt. Square also prompts for a short description of what was purchased.

You are charged a slightly higher credit card fee then you would if you signed up for a merchant account at your bank and purchased the equipment for processing credit cards. But it is mobile, it is free (no monthly or yearly fees), and don’t even need a business bank account.. your personal account works just fine.

I give it 2 thumbs up, a facebook like, and a strongly recommend.

I talk about it in this video:

Elsewhere Around the Web

She’s quiet about this but my daughter has started blogging. I won’t share much more except to say, she’s a great writer, a fun person, and so smart. Read her “There is a point here somewhere” intro and you should be hooked.

Madalyn Sklar is a social media consultant and founder of GoGirls – an advocacy/support organization for female musicians. She adds to the “End of Year/Looking Forward” posts.. and does a great job.

I don’t know if this is a retread.. but if you want to build a very quick, but useful, smart phone app, Magmito.com is probably a good place to start.