Square’s New Handheld Payment Scanner Looks Like a Phone

Square has a caller mode for merchants to instrumentality your money: a caller handheld device.

The outgo company’s small achromatic pucks, touchscreen terminals, and portable wedges already assemblage the satellite of contactless point-of-sale payments; you’ve astir apt swiped oregon tapped connected a Square gadget countless times astatine cafés, retail stores, and farmer’s markets.

The slick caller phone-like handset is meant for servers, sellers, oregon anyone moving successful lawsuit work to transportation astir and usage to cod payments oregon enactment successful orders. It is called, hold for it, Square Handheld. It costs $399 and is available now.

Square says much than 4 cardinal sellers already usage its hardware and services successful their businesses—point-of-sale terminals, outgo processors, and inventory absorption tools that purpose to support a concern running. (Square takes a chopped of the transactions for its trouble.)

In April, Square announced it was smashing each of its assorted services into a single point-of-sale app. The Square Handheld is different effort to further synergize those capabilities, packing everything into a slim instrumentality that tin besides process payments straight via a paper reader.

Square is operated by Block, the fiscal tech institution that besides runs CashApp and AfterPay. Thomas Templeton, Block’s caput of hardware, says the effort down the Square Handheld was to marque a instrumentality that would some integrate with the service’s bundle and inventory absorption systems and beryllium casual to transportation around. Portable barcode scanners tin beryllium large and bulky, oregon connected with a ligament that tin marque moving them astir a hassle. This small fella is wireless and has the acquainted look and consciousness of a chunky smartphone.

“Portability is getting much important,” Templeton says.

The Square handheld is fractional an inch thick, weighs little than 3 quarters of a pound, and connects wirelessly to the Square system. So a server tin transportation astir the instrumentality successful their pocket, propulsion it retired to instrumentality an order, past nonstop that bid to the room without having to spell backmost and plug the bid into different computer.