Square is the cleanest on-ramp to payments in the industry — and also the cleanest trap. Your customer directory, card-on-file vault, invoice subscriptions, and terminal firmware are all tightly coupled to Square's ecosystem. In ten business days we extract the portable pieces, replace the Square-only pieces with open-standards equivalents, and migrate your portfolio to multiflow without losing a single recurring invoice or in-person tap.
On Square Payments today
On multiflow after migration
| What you pay for | Square Payments | multiflow |
|---|---|---|
| In-person base rate | 2.6% + 10¢ | IC + 0.30% + 10¢ |
| Online (card-keyed) rate | 2.9% + 30¢ | IC + 0.55% + 10¢ |
| Invoice rate | 3.3% + 30¢ | IC + 0.65% + 10¢ |
| Instant Deposit | 1.75% | Next-day free; RTP $0.25 |
| Chargeback fee | $0 (Square absorbs) | $15 but refunded on win |
| Monthly fee | $0 Free / $60+ Plus | $0 <$50k; $99 above |
| Hardware financing | $169 Terminal up-front | $0 loaner terminals |
| Refund fee policy | Keeps 10-30¢ | Returns fixed fee |
Flat-rate processors optimise for onboarding friction, not P&L. Every line above that reads "flat" on the left and "IC +" or "tiered" on the right is a line where multiflow returns margin that was previously opaque to you.
You file the Square data-export request through Dashboard → Account → Data — releases Customer Directory, Card-on-File list, Invoice Subscriptions, and 24-month Sales History. Arrives in 48 hours. Simultaneously you inventory your channels: Online, Invoice, Terminal count per location, Square for Retail items, Square Appointments bookings.
Underwriting pulls 3 months of Square statements. We assign one parent MID + one sub-MID per location. If you use Square Appointments or Retail with integrated booking/inventory, we map to our partner integrations (Calendly + Lightspeed respectively).
Square's Card-on-File export gives you customer IDs and card fingerprints. We run the multiflow PCI-port process to re-tokenize against our vault. Online checkout swaps from Square Web Payments SDK to multiflow Checkout (one script tag change + one API key change). Terminals stay on Square.
Square Invoice Subscriptions export includes next-billing date, amount, and customer ref. We recreate each subscription in multiflow with identical next_billing_date. Square subscriptions cancel at period end. Customers see one invoice per period, not two.
Two locations per day. We ship pre-provisioned multiflow terminals (Clover Flex or PAX A920) overnight. Onsite install is 15 minutes — unplug Square, plug multiflow, connect WiFi, test a $0.01 auth. Staff training is 5 minutes because the UX is near-identical.
If you use Square Appointments, we migrate to our Calendly integration (booking flow stays the same for customers). If Square for Retail, we migrate inventory + sales history to Lightspeed. This is the day with the most variability — budget extra time if you have complex inventory.
Tax rate definitions port from Square. Per-location soft descriptors go live — every receipt, statement, and bank line now reads the actual DBA not "SQ *YOURCO". We ping every location with a test transaction and verify descriptor accuracy.
Square Customer Directory imports to multiflow. If you use Square Marketing, we export to your email platform of choice (Klaviyo, Mailchimp). A one-time "you'll see a new name on your statement" email goes to card-on-file customers to reduce chargeback confusion.
Any webhook consumers repoint from Square to multiflow. Square account goes to drain: no new charges, active refunds process normally, disputes respond normally. Square stays open 60 days (not 30) because Square's chargeback resolution timeline runs longer than Stripe's.
Seven days, one operator ceremony per day, zero weekend overtime. Each step is reversible through day 30 — you do not fly one-way until the Square Payments drain window closes.
Everything below is yours under Square Payments's ToS. Export now, before underwriting opens — it's faster while you're still a customer in good standing.
Once you submit notice-of-migration, some processors throttle export API limits. You want these files in your S3 bucket before anyone at Square Payments knows you're leaving.
Square Gift Cards. Square gift cards are a closed-loop Square product. You cannot port outstanding gift card balances to another processor directly. Options: honor outstanding balances on Square for 12 months (leave Square account partially open), buy out the liability from customers, or issue multiflow gift cards as an exchange. We recommend option 1.
Square Payroll. Not a payments product but bundled. If you use Square Payroll, migrate to Gusto or Rippling in parallel. Don't try to use multiflow for payroll — we don't do that.
Terminal firmware. Square terminals are locked to Square — you cannot flash them to another processor. We provide loaner hardware (Clover Flex or PAX) at zero cost under a 12-month agreement. Return-to-Square hardware must be wiped and returned at your cost per Square's lease agreement.
Square Capital loans. If you have an outstanding Square Capital advance, it continues to draw from any residual Square processing volume. We can't migrate that — you either pay it off early or leave enough Square volume to service it.
Square Online website. If your website is built on Square Online (the hosted site builder), you'll need to rebuild on WooCommerce / Shopify / Webflow. Square Online isn't portable.
Rollback through day 30 is straightforward: repoint online checkout back to Square, terminals stay as loaners (we recover on day 31+), unmigrated invoice subscriptions stayed on Square so they never stopped. Migrated subs are on multiflow — you'd cancel + recreate on Square.
The expensive part of rollback is terminal logistics. If you've activated more than 10 multiflow terminals and want to return to Square, you'll need to lease or buy Square hardware again at roughly $169-299 per terminal. This is rarely enough reason to reconsider — by day 15 you're usually seeing IC+ savings that justify staying.
Square earns its pricing premium on simplicity. If you run a single location, flat-rate pricing is easier to understand than interchange-plus. The breakeven is roughly $200k-300k per location in annual card volume — under that, Square's 2.6% is competitive; over that, the math flips sharply. Multi-location operators, multi-brand operators, and anyone running over $1M annually are leaving 0.5-1.5 percentage points on the table by staying on Square's flat rate.
The second driver is risk tolerance. Square's hold-first-ask-questions-later posture works for low-risk retail but is catastrophic for operators in nutra, supplements, event tickets, high-ticket services, and anything Square flags in its opaque Risk review. Named underwriter access on multiflow means a human picks up the phone within hours, not days.
Multi-location operators, multi-brand operators, and anyone running over $1M annually are leaving 0.5-1.5 percentage points on the table by staying on Square's flat rate.The second driver is risk tolerance.
From the Square Payments migration field notesYou lose: the polished Square Dashboard, Square Marketing (email), Square Payroll, Square Capital (loans), Square Gift Cards (closed loop), and the 10-minute onboarding. You gain: interchange-plus pricing, per-brand descriptors, named underwriter, multi-acquirer routing, faster settlement at lower cost, and a dispute queue that doesn't silently eat your response window.
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