Square’s New Handheld Payment Scanner Looks Like a Phone

Square has a caller measurement for merchants to return your money: a caller handheld device.

The costs company’s small achromatic pucks, touchscreen terminals, and portable wedges already crowd nan world of contactless point-of-sale payments; you’ve astir apt swiped aliases tapped connected a Square gadget countless times astatine cafés, unit stores, and farmer’s markets.

The slick caller phone-like handset is meant for servers, sellers, aliases anyone moving successful customer work to transportation astir and usage to cod payments aliases put 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, costs processors, and inventory guidance devices that purpose to support a business running. (Square takes a trim of nan transactions for its trouble.)

In April, Square announced it was smashing each of its various 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, nan financial tech institution that besides runs CashApp and AfterPay. Thomas Templeton, Block’s caput of hardware, says nan effort down nan Square Handheld was to make a instrumentality that would some merge pinch nan service’s package and inventory guidance systems and beryllium easy to transportation around. Portable barcode scanners tin beryllium large and bulky, aliases connected pinch a ligament that tin make moving them astir a hassle. This small fella is wireless and has nan acquainted look and consciousness of a chunky smartphone.

“Portability is getting much important,” Templeton says.

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