Comment by nathannecro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nathannecro | Hacker News Reader

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I am not affiliated with either company and my only experience with operating a physical storefront are restaurants.

That being said, after taking a quick look at the front-facing material on both sites, I have a question for you/GoPago: While the point you make about the initial cost being higher (about 1k with iPad) is valid, Square seems to run a pricing scheme where they charge a flat $275 per month and get rid of any extra cut they take.

Just based off some rough math, assuming the business processes $200k worth of transactions per year (about $550 per day, very reasonable) merchants will save about 2.5k per year if they use Square. For more slightly more successful businesses who process upwards of $500k-1m per year the delta grows even larger (upwards of $26k).

If the merchant runs a 1-man business which processes maybe $50k worth of transactions per year and uses Square's charge of 2.75% per swipe, he'll still be saving approx $300. And he'll own the hardware which inherently has resell value.

What specifically does GoPago offer over Square which is worth at least $300?

Square's $275 plan is only for the first 250k; after that they charge a normal credit-card rate.

What's the value of GoPago over Square for that 50k merchant? Mobile Storefront -- which has been a fantastic discovery tool to connect consumers with merchants on GoPago. It allows people to place orders on their phone to the POS terminal itself, no phone-calls necessary. We also have a much more robust reporting suite, support for scanners, support for wireless chit printers (so merchants don't have to ferry order receipts to the kitchen), a modifier system (this is huge if you do any sort of volume -- on Square's software, you need to manually input modifiers and their prices every time you ring up an item with modifiers like condiments/toppings).

Also, the cost difference in Square's favor is not realized until the end of the first year. If you're starting a business, the outlay needed for Square is precious money that could go elsewhere in your organization.

Can you elaborate on what "modifiers" are? Just curious.

Are they just addons? For instance, "add cheese" for $1 to an existing menu item? Or are modifiers something else entirely?

Basically used for food service. You want a system that supports multiple modifier groups per item, of which some may be required for the order. So for instance, if you order a steak, the required modifier group would be "doneness: rare, medium rare, ...", but you could also have optional additional modifier groups available such as "allergies", "togo/for here", etc.

It's actually a quite interesting mapping exercise. I spent a couple of days watching how my friend handled his customers, and what they ordered. This was important because it comes down to decisions like do I make the menu item "Large Coffee" or "Coffee" with a size modifier group. The latter may make most sense to the developer parts of our brains, but it was completely the wrong thing for my friend, with the former, he could just stab "large coffee" and move on... Workflow trumps "correctness" in some sense.

I'm only familiar with the modifier system in BreadCrumb, which works okay, but would really benefit from conditionals, since modifier groups may have the same label, but have different pricing schemes. For instance, lattes had different price differentials between sizes than chai lattes, so two size modifier groups had to be created with those different price differences. It's not so bad until you go to create a new group, and try to find the right modifier for "Large" since you've now got 5 of them to account for all your menu differences.

Square's Wallet app also allows customers to send orders right to Square Register. Square wallet stores your credit card info so you don't have to swipe. The customer's picture pops up on the register and the seller taps the photo.

Square Wallet also does business discovery via location and promotions/loyalty programs (i.e. virtual "buy 10 get 1 free" deals, etc) and gift cards.

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