Stripe vs. Square: Which Is a Better POS System?

Updated March 29, 2023

Our Small Business Expert

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When researching the best POS solutions on the market, you're bound to come across Stripe and Square.

While both are well-known tools, their business models, target market, and typical buyer personas are, in ways, worlds apart.

This article will help you understand the key differences and comparisons between the two solutions to help you make the right POS choice for your business.

Product	Stripe Payments	Square
Description	Stripe Payments provides reliable, highly customizable online payment capabilities along with a myriad of other easy-to-use features.	Square is a free point-of-sale app that’s suitable for just about every business type. It’s a winner for small businesses looking for an intuitive system without committing to monthly fees.
Best For	Best Features	Best Value
Rating	Rating image, 4.20 out of 5 stars. 4.20/5 Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor.	Rating image, 3.80 out of 5 stars. 3.80/5 Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor.
Pricing	No subscription fee 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction Volume discounts if sales above $80,000/month Reduced rate for 501c3 nonprofits	No subscription fee 2.6% plus $0.10 per swiped transaction 3.5% plus $0.15 per manually entered transaction 2.9% plus $0.30 per online transaction
What We Like	Customizability Multiple payment options Integrations	Straightforward flat-rate pricing Intuitive user interface Feature-rich for a wide range of business types
Could Be Better	Developer experience In-store support Stronger feature list	Limited customer support hours and options Lacks features for bigger businesses Pricing not ideal for high-volume/small ticket merchants
Key Features	Online and in-person payments Billing, invoicing, and subscription management Reporting and analytics	Free smartphone card reader Inventory management Offline mode Customizable dashboard
Support	Email Phone Live chat Online guides	Online knowledge-base Phone support M-F 6a.m. to 6p.m. PT
Ease of Use	Website integration requires coding	Simple setup Sleek, centralized online dashboard
Next Steps	Read Review	Learn More for Square

Stripe vs. Square: An overview

Stripe is a white-label, web-based solution aimed at e-commerce businesses looking for a payment-processing option, while its in-person POS solution was launched only in late 2018.

Square is primarily a free mobile POS app that helps merchants process card payments. However, Square also offers many typical POS features, such as inventory management, sales analytics, and customer loyalty. Square offers two separate POS solutions: Square for Retail and Square for Restaurants, each offering industry-specific features.

Who is Stripe for?

Stripe is aimed at businesses that have a developer, or a team of developers, as it requires experienced coders to set up. It's also an excellent choice for businesses looking for a solution that offers nearly universal payment options.

For developers, Stripe's APIs are easy to operate and have a very good reputation for the website and payment integration they provide.

Though Stripe does support in-person payment processing, the solution really excels in online payment processing.

Who is Square for?

Square is geared toward small and midsize businesses, and also makes sense for new businesses with smaller budgets available for POS software investments. The Square retail app is free to use, and users aren't required to invest in any proprietary hardware.

Square offers a low-cost option for a large range of business types, including coffee shops, boutiques, restaurants, and farmer's market vendors.

For those interested in using Square's POS hardware too, Square offers proprietary POS terminals, receipt printers, barcode scanners, card readers, cash drawers, and more.

Stripe vs. Square: Features

Stripe and Square offer very different yet almost equally powerful features for their target users. Let's drill down into what kind of features both tools offer.

What Stripe offers

Stripe's not your typical POS, and it doesn't offer your typical POS features. Below, we'll go through some of Stripe's most interesting and powerful features.

Near-universal payment options

Stripe's payment platform offers a huge range of payment options, including simple credit and debit transactions, ACH payments, and Microsoft Pay, and it works with more than 100 currencies.

Its two main API solutions, Stripe Checkout and Stripe Elements, integrate into your existing website, providing customers with a seamless checkout experience.

Fraud protection

Stripe also offers fraud protection services, known as Stripe Radar, powered by machine learning and included in Stripe's normal transaction fee pricing.

The solution detects fraudulent payments by scoring transactions based on multiple signals and data points and also provides manual tools to help users coordinate their own optimized fraud strategy.

A screenshot of Stripe Payments' fraud protection services called Stripe Radar.

Stripe offers advanced fraud protection built into the software itself. Image source: Author

Source: Stripe software.

Other Stripe features include:

Stripe Atlas: A "tool kit" to help users form their internet-based business in the United States.
Stripe Billing: Helps users create and send custom invoices and request payment from customers.
Stripe Sources: Allows users to accept payment methods from anywhere in the world with a single integration.
Stripe Sigma: Offers customizable financial and built-in reporting.

Screenshot of Stripe Payments' invoice sample for billing and invoicing.

Stripe supports invoicing for one-off bills as well as for repeated payments. Image source: Author

What Square offers

For a free POS app, Square offers an excellent range of features. Below, we go through some of its most notable attributes.

Dashboard

The Square dashboard acts as a central hub for users. From here, users can manage all their business operations related to sales, customers, and employees. Far from being an out-of-the-box feature, the dashboard can be customized to suit each business's needs. Using drag-and-drop, users can add or remove specific widgets and organize them as they see fit.

Inventory management

Though Square's POS inventory management feature isn't as robust as some of its competitors, especially those favored by larger businesses, the feature is powerful for a free app. Users can import existing stock using a CSV spreadsheet, adjust stock levels, sync their online and in-store inventory, and set up low-stock alerts.

Screenshot of Square’s reports section for sales analytics including graphs and left-hand sidebar.

Square's dashboard gives businesses real-time insights into their sales trends. Image source: Author

Source: Square POS software.

Other useful and intuitive features include:

Sales analytics
Offline payments mode (including credit card processing)
Advanced POS reporting
Multi-location management
Virtual terminal
Customer management

Results

It really depends on what kind of payment-processing solution you're looking for, but in terms of number and depth of features, Stripe wins this round.