Do Square credit card readers allow for personal use?
What I should have done in the first place was just ask them.  From their customer support team: Thanks for writing in and for your interest in Square. It is perfectly acceptable to use Square for personal business, such as a yard sale. You do not need to have a registered business to take advantage of Square and the ability to accept credit cards. Just please note that it is against our Terms of Service to process prepaid cards, gift cards or your own credit card using your own Square account. Additionally, you may not use Square as a money transfer system. For every payment processed through Square, you must provide a legitimate good or service. Please let me know if you have any additional concerns. "Yes. From their TOS: ""By creating a Square Account, you confirm that you are either a legal resident of the United States, a United States citizen, or a business entity...""." My husband used this device at work in an organization/club that collects dues for fundraisers. The fundraisers are only for the club. So I think that is not business at all. They have no business tax id#, etc? and they use it for personal reasons when collecting money via Cc#'s if this helps you. I used square in the past for personal yard sale and they did not transfer balance to my bank acct because they told me it was against their policy and I had to have a business license that they could either refund the credit cards i process or keep the money. So they kept it I never got it back. I don't recommend anybody to use square.
There are rules and regulations as to how the credit card information must be stored, and I assume Square adhere to these rules. The point is that the barber doesn't need to see your credit card at all, and doesn't have to keep its number for keeping tabs, you only share the information with Square and they remit payments to everyone else. This is very similar to Paypal, Amazon and Google checkout systems, except that Square combine it with physical card processing. Direct from Square Support in an email to me today when I asked this very question: Thanks for writing in. You can certainly use Square for personal use. When activating your account, you’ll be asked how you intend to use Square. You’ll simply need to select ‘Individual Use.’ Don't think we can get more clear than that :) I have never used Square, but my understanding is that they charge a premium for their services.  Basically, because you get this nifty smartphone pluggable credit card swiper, you end up paying more than the alternate options.  Granted I am in no way knowledgeable of the alternates (as in, mobile credit card machines?), but I assume they aren't as easy to set up.  When it first came out, one of my buddies decided that he would accept payments from friends via Square (for beer, meals, concert tickets, gas, etc), and I remember reading that it charges a flat fee plus variable cost, which I thought was a rather silly cost to be incurring.  Maybe that has changed?  Basically, Square sounds almost to good to be true, but I'm not a small business owner dealing with credit card transactions, so you probably shouldn't listen to me. "I think the survey needs to be broken down to ""as a consumer..."" and ""as a merchant...""  I'm not sure any service like the one you propose can be really implemented on the consumer side.   In particular, I suspect few if any consumers would pay for the privilege  You might look into the company ""Neat"" who sold a specialized scanner and software package designed around organizing reciepts a while back.   Retailer buy-in is a huge factor too.  You can create a platform and encourage retailers to send reciepts via email or whatever, but at the end of the day, a lot of retailers still see value in a reciept 5x as long as it should be to itemize the 22 ways you ""saved money"" and the 19 cross-promotions or coupons they want to inform you of.    Unless you can provide equal percieved value for them, they won't be interested, even if consumers like the concept.  The classic example in this debate is the US chain ""CVS Pharmacy""-- whose long reciepts are the butt of many jokes, but persist because they're part of an elaborate reward scheme where they give people coupons in the hopes of them coming back to use them.  As for the smaller vendors who may not be as tied to such strategies, they're also likely going to be less technically equipped to cope with  a new feature.  You almost need to target the POS vendors like NCR and IBM-- if you can make ""electronic reciept"" a feature in their platform, it becomes something that hundreds of stores are getting built into their systems for ""free"" and they just have to turn it on.  That's a lot easier than selling to every single retailer one at a time, and it would be a big enough launch that you could start to get customer preference" "These are services that facilitate using credit cards. So whatever vulnerabilities there may be, your risk is limited to your liability to the credit card issuer. Usually, this means no liability whatsoever, and the most significant risk is the inconvenience of re-issuing the compromised card. Some card issuers separate the ""Pay"" service account from your main account so that even that risk is mitigated - the number exposed is only used for that specific service and doesn't compromise your actual physical card." "I think that you're missing one significant point: NFC is not only used for payments. It's a general protocol (""Near-Field Communication"") that is supposed to provide easy connectivity between adjacent devices. As such, built-in encryption/security are counter-productive the same way as built-in encryption/security are counter-productive in IP: you're forcing something from a higher layer on a lower layer. Applications that use NFC but don't need this extra security will pay unnecessary penalty. Here come providers like Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and others. They provide applications that use NFC for specific purpose. And they provide the security needed for that purpose. Banks are welcome to introduce their own applications, but they lack the client base to make it wide enough spread for POS providers to include it. Visa/Mastercard have their own ""near-field"" solutions already that are embedded in cards themselves, and are not necessarily interested in competing with software giants like Apple or Google in their fields. Phone manufacturers also lack the wide enough client base (with the exception of Samsung, which is very popular and as the result is able to pull off its own payment system - I think they're partnered with Visa)." Envudu (envudu.com) looks very promising, and I think what they are planning to put out will do essentially everything you want. It's a single prepaid card, but with a connected app. On the app you choose which budget category you're going to spend on next, and then swipe your card. Your purchase gets deducted from that category. There aren't a ton of details yet on their website (e.g., what happens if you try to swipe on a category that doesn't have the funds available?) and there is going to be a $20/year fee, but I think it meets all of your criteria, even though it's a single card--you'll just need to use a smartphone with it. We have a pre-paid mastercard.  This will only allow the spending up to the amount already paid into the card account.  Visa Electron is a bank account linked debit card that will not allow the account to go overdrawn but this card type is getting quite rare. There are different ways of credit card purchase authorizations. if some choose less secure method it's their problem. Merchants are charged back if a stolen card is used. Most corporate policies strictly prohibit the card's use for personal use, even if the intent is to re-pay in full, on or before the due date.  I'm certain it has something to do with limitation of liability, i.e. the monetary risk the company is willing to put itself at, in order to offer a corporate card program. In my experience, AMEX Corporate Card Services is the most widely-used card, and in my experience, it is your employer that determines and administers the policy that outlines the card's appropriate use, not the credit card provider, so you're best to check with your employer for a definitive answer to this. I stopped using pre-authorized payments for things like telephone etc., because it made it more possible/likely for a fraudulent charge to sneak by. But if there is an occasion for choosing pre-authorized payments (like charities, and places of exact fixed price) I use my credit card because then I also get points. Furthermore, I reason (perhaps wrongly) that if there is intermediary step between actual money (bank account) and the source of the bill then it gives me better chance of catching irregularities and hence a little safer.  I am sure other members here will laugh my naivety, but there you have it. My recollection is that most traditional reader systems charge like 5%.  For squareup there were two different pricing schemes  1. 2.75% per swipe. 2. 0% per swipe but a $275 permonth charge.  When I did the math the flat fee only made sense if you're doing over $2500ish per month in business.    These fees seem pretty minimal to me. "Using the card but paying it off entirely at each billing cycle is the only ""Good"" way to use a credit card.  If you feel like you will be tempted to buy more than you can pay back don't use credit. As far as furnishing the apartment, the best thing to do would be to save and pay cash, but if you want to use credit the credit available at stores would be a far better deal than carrying it on a card." Like email and spam, fighting creditcard fraud is a cat and mouse game, with technology and processes constantly being developed to reduce fraud. The CVV on the back of the card is just one more layer of security.  Requiring the CVV generally requires you to physically have access to the card. CVV should not be stored by any merchant. This frustrates card skimming fraud as the CVV is not present in the track data and fraud caused by database compromises.  You should never use your PIN online. MC/VISA both have implementations of 3D-Secure (SecureCode for MC and Verified by VISA) which require a password / code to confirm card ownership. Depends on both Issuer and Merchant implementing the standard.  Regarding not needing a PIN at the airport, some low value transactions no longer need PINs, depending on the Issuer and Scheme (VISA/MC). MasterCard PayPass or VISA PayWave enable low value contactless transactions without PIN. In Australia, the maximum value for a contactless transactions is $100 AUD. At some merchants (McDonalds for example) a PIN is not required for for meals purchased with VISA (at least, for the cheeseburger I bought there as a test). This makes sense - if you don't need a PIN for a contactless purchase, why do you need it for a chip based purchase?  So - why allow PIN free transactions? On average customers report stolen credit cards / wallet very quickly and the losses are correspondingly small. As card issuers are always online, cards can be cancelled very quickly after being reported lost / stolen. Finally, by performing transactions for just a few cents or pennies, the merchant (Spotify) can likely validate you are the owner of the card as you'd need access to your online bank to confirm the transactions.  PayPal do this with bank account to confirm ownership. (Unless I've misunderstood your statement). Have you considered a service that allows you to generate credit card numbers on the fly? DoNotTrackMe allows you to generate a CC number on the fly, for a specific amount.  If the vendor tries to charge more, it will fail.  If it gets stolen, it's useless. I don't know the specific fees off hand, but they have an annual fee for the feature.  Still, for the protection, doesn't seem like a bad way to go. Note: I have no affiliation with DNTM, I'm just a very happy user of their email protection products.  The Masked Cards faq is here.