Square has officially announced the launch of new Square Banking tools, each one designed to give sellers instant access of their cash flow, along with easier ways to manage their earnings.
According to certain reports, business owners can sign up for a Square payments account and a free Square Checking¹ account in a few minutes through one streamlined application.
To understand the significance of such a development, we must take into account how traditional banking services, designed to serve larger, more established businesses, introduce high levels of cost, risk, and complexity for the most cash flow-dependent businesses. You see, their processing delays, transaction fees, disconnected systems, and lack of simple management tools make it difficult for small businesses to maintain healthy cash flow, access capital when they need it, or make informed financial decisions in real-time.
In response to this bottleneck, during 2021, Square would unveil Square Banking, a suite of financial products purpose-built to help small business owners easily manage their cash flow and get more from their primary banking services. The excellence of this suite can be understood once you consider its Square Checking and Square Savings accounts are now used by hundreds of thousands of sellers monthly.
“The all-in-one Square ecosystem absolutely provides peace of mind around finances,” said Fumio Tashiro, owner of Mirror Tea and Sake House. “Not only do I have access to funds instantly for free, but I went from spending five to ten hours a week on manual bookkeeping to just minutes a day in the Square Dashboard.”
Talk about what can be expected from the company’s newly-launched assortment of tools, we begin from Square Checking account, which now enjoys seamless integration with payment processing to eliminate the typical waiting period associated with bank transfers. Furthermore, there are no monthly fees, service or maintenance fees, or minimum balance requirements.
Next up, there is the prospect of easy cash deposit at more than 70,000+ retail locations, including Kroger, Walgreens, Dollar General, and more. Users can also seamlessly accept invoice payments and route cash via ACH transfers. This they can do using their account and routing numbers, and that too, without any processing fees.
Another detail worth a mention is rooted in the potential for printing or emailing checks to pay vendors, employees, or bills; or depositing checks directly from your phone through the Square Point of Sale app anywhere.
Then, there is a facility dedicated towards leveraging debit cards for purchases and ATM withdrawals anywhere that accepts Mastercard debit cards. Business owners can also avail instant payouts from select third-party partner apps, with no fees whatsoever.
“I use Square for banking, and it has really revolutionized my business organization,” said Emily Yates, founder and owner of Flower Friends SF. “I’m able to see everything including my transactions and how much I’m spending per project. Before Square I was not doing that, and it was really challenging.”
Turning our attention towards Square Savings, it allows sellers to automatically budget, save, and organize their money from sales, all done using a competitive APY. Sellers using Square’s free business savings account will also get personalized savings recommendations to help them easily allocate funds into folders dedicated to their top expenses and investment goals.
Markedly enough, the stated mechanism banks upon a seller’s own cash flow data and industry-specific insights, derived from the savings patterns of similar sellers within Square’s ecosystem, to make such recommendations.
All in all, these recommendations tread up a long distance to eliminate budgeting guesswork, thus empowering sellers to save for the future with confidence, spend more time on growing their business, and remove one more layer of complexity from their operations.
“Sellers need simple banking solutions designed for what matters most to their business – instant access to their sales, simple yet smart ways to save, and a partner that is committed to empowering their growth,” said Adam Turnbull, Head of Banking at Square. “Square Banking is embedded at the source of small businesses’ cash flow, with solutions that are directly connected to payments, making it easier, faster, and automated for a seller to manage their business finances.”
