Alternatives to using Square for gift cards? (They are now charging a 2.5% fee to load them)

[sande]

Hi, I work at a small business that uses gift cards as a kind of debit card that customers can load up with money (for a discount) and then spend down over the course of the year. We use Square (for this and regular credit card transactions) and worked very well because loading and using the cards were free for us as long as we were paid in cash or check and they could spend the card down with no book keeping from us. But now they are going to start charging 2.5% to load which is going to cost us many thousands of dollars. At this point there are hundreds of these cards out in the world being used so we are at a bit of a loss of what to do.

Are there other POS systems that don't charge to load a gift card? Or any other ideas how to run a system like this outside of Square? Thank you.

 

[kayelise]

@sande I’ve tried creating my own manual gift card system outside of square - I ordered a box of custom-designed cards from Vistaprint and just write the balance on them as they are used down. It’s not great/a little messy but does the trick for my small shop.

Something else you may consider would be house accounts through Square? It works backwards of your current system - you would charge them every month for their total bill automatically, rather than a pre-payment. I don’t believe Square charges extra for this. The only caveat is it’s billed via their Invoice portal, which has slightly higher processing fees than the typical checkout.