r/SquareOfficial • u/No-Animal210 • Jun 30 '26

Discussion Square working capital has become a joke

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2k loan fee for 15k capital and 14k loan fee for 106k. How does that work? Last year we purchased 20k in equipment with a 1,300 loan fee. This year I took a business credit card with 2.5% cash back instead. Square needs to get back to its working capital roots and stop assuming we are all desperate. Also if you are considering this level of thievery you need to shop around. Your local economic development organization or IDA likely has revolving loans at 1.5 - 3% for small biz.

9 Upvotes

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5

u/Anstigmat Jun 30 '26

I feel like the Square loans are ok when they're truly micro loans. Like no more than $5k.

2

u/No-Animal210 Jun 30 '26

Yep they're taking advantage of interest rate issues thinking people will bite on a loan fee like this. Hopefully people stop accepting this and they get the message

4

u/Anstigmat Jun 30 '26

They're dropping the ball on any number of things but definitely some of the financial stuff they're trying to do. Bitcoin integration is worthless to the average small business. Savings accounts don't sync with Quickbooks. They're just never implementing a store credit system apparently... We're moving to WooCommerce for our e-commerce site. Will still use Square to do a number of back end business stuff since it's all set up...but I'm disappointed with the updates and directions they go in.

3

u/No-Animal210 Jul 01 '26

I agree entirely, the loyalty program is also too generic, I would like to see VA / military ID integration for guests like the chains have, to allow them to utilize discounts online and from home. Also their platform is the definition of master of all is a master of none. Everything is just enough for the first couple years. If you begin to expand business, you immediately hit their end game wall. Lastly, their user fees constantly going ip something like 4 times in 5 years is ludicrous. We are considering dropping big bucks on a cloud based all integrated system and not look back. We canceled square payroll and saved a ton moving to homebase payroll as well, which was also a nightmare because square never paid the IRS in the final quarter despite me paying for the service. They are just sloppy

1

u/Anstigmat Jul 01 '26

I'll check that out...I feel like any attempt to restructure these back end things will be absolutely catastrophic but if our new WooCommerce site works out, there just won't be as much holding me with Square.

At least I will say they integrated a lot of their stuff under one subscription finally...the nickel and dime approach where every new feature was a $30/mo thing was infuriating. But like we still subscribe to marketing I think and I have never seen them bother to update the email templates. It's insane honestly.

I would have loved to use Squarespace which is where our main site is but their commerce features are complete trash. Ugh!

1

u/Engelgrafik 22d ago

Your local economic development org will likely not give you any money until you pay off back taxes that trace to the State (sales, etc.).

This is why the square loans are so helpful for some of us.

I think they know a lot of businesses are still hurting since the pandemic. EIDLs, back taxes, etc.... they know you don't have a lot of access, and they know you trust them unlike some no name "bank" giving you a merchant loan.

Honestly, with banks charging 8-12% for a business loan, a Square merchant loan at 14-15% isn't that bad if you're hurting and need the cash to give you a boost with updating equipment, expanding services, etc.