Five years after it first came to Canada, Square is broadening its toolbox of mobile payment solutions with a new feature that bartenders are sure to like – customers will be able to open a tab.
Square, a mobile payment processing solutions vendor with an engineering office in Waterloo, Ont., is best known for the Square Reader which plugs into a smartphone and allows small businesses to accept credit card payments. It came to Canada in 2012, and bought Toronto’s Kili Technologies in March, giving the company its second Canadian office.
The latest feature announced by Square for the Canadian market is an addition to its Register product, which is a tablet-based point of sale (POS) app for iOS and Android that marries the Square Reader for credit card processing with all the functionality of a traditional point of sale system, including encryption, offline mode, digital receipts via email or text message and/or traditional paper receipts, the ability to add a tip and lots of backend analytics tools to analyze sales and product performance.
The new feature is Open Tickets, which essentially allows a customer to open a tab.Rather than leaving their credit card with the bartender, who needs to manage several cards and tabs, the card can be swiped at the beginning of the night and returned to the customer. The tab is left open, and purchases added over the evening before the bill is settled at the end of the night.
According to Square, research shows that the ability to open a tab tends to lead to larger sales for businesses, and it got a positive review from Port Moody, B.C.’s Yellow Dog Brewing, which tested the new feature.
“The Open Tickets feature is perfect for our business,” said Mike Coghill, owner of Yellow Dog Brewing, in a statement. “We used many systems to track open tabs but with the Open Tickets feature, everything is automated and simple and easier for our customers.”
The Open Tickets feature is now available to Square Register users.