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With Square POS Magento integration, merchants can extend their reach to more customers, better manage their retailing with centralized product, inventory, order, and customer data, and deliver customers a seamless shopping experience across channels.

However, another problem arises since Square POS is not natively compatible with the Magento eCommerce platform. That’s how to connect these two systems properly to produce the desired outcomes. The most common way is to use a connector, but its drawbacks, such as high costs, unstable data syncs, and security concerns are worrisome.

To help retailers choose the most suitable integration solution methods, we list the top 5 connectors for you to compare their features and pricing. Then we also recommend an optimal solution to connect your Magento and physical stores for cost savings and efficiency. Let’s dive in!

Why need Square POS and Magento integration?

Square POS integration with Magento facilitates real-time data exchanges between the two systems, thus allowing retailers to streamline key business processes and manage their retailing effectively.

  • Better control multi-channel inventory: Square POS Magento 2 integration syncs product lists, pricing, attributes, and description in real time, thereby ensuring consistent product data across channels. The integration also lets you track stock levels for multiple physical and online storefronts and automatically create purchase orders for timely replenishment.
  • Accept varied payment methods: Connecting Square POS with Magento also enables merchants to accept many online and in-store payment types, including buy now pay later, contactless payments, credit cards, debit cards, and cash. Retailers can also get a complete view of payment data, such as payment status and transaction amounts for better financial management.
  • Enhance customer experience: Magento 2 Square POS integration consolidates core business data, including customers, orders, and products, thus delivering customers a seamless shopping experience across sales channels. Shoppers can get accurate product information, choose in-store pickup or shipping, and redeem loyalty points both online and in-store. Based on customer data, such as spending habits and purchase history, retailers can also make personalized offers and develop well-tailored marketing messages to achieve more sales.

To enjoy these huge benefits, you should establish a stable connection between Square POS and Magento by using a suitable integration method. Let’s discover the most popular ways of integrating Square POS with Magento!

3 ways to connect Magento with Square POS

You can choose one of the following ways to integrate Magento with Square POS.

Use the Square extension for Magento 2

If you already have a Square account, you can download and use the Square extension for Magento at no charge. The extension enables merchants to integrate different Square products with Magento, including Square POS and Square Payments.

  • How it works: After installing, you can configure data syncs between Magento and Square POS, including real-time or interval-based sync frequencies. The extension syncs key business data, including transactions, refunds, customer data, product catalog info, and inventory quantities from Magento to Square POS or vice versa depending on which system you set as the source of records.
  • Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Free if you already have a Square account

Available in a small number of countries

Detailed documentation

Only transfer orders using Square payment methods

Fast and easy to use

Can’t sync orders, loyalty points

Use a 3rd-party connector

Another common way to connect Square POS with Magento is to use a 3rd-party connector. These integration solutions are normally easy to use and require no or little technical expertise.

  • How it works: 3rd-party connectors often employ protocols such as APIs to boost communication between disparate applications, thus facilitating seamless data flow from one system to the other. These connectors can also support data transformation, real-time supervision, error detection, and more. Magento 2 Square POS connectors utilize Magento and Square POS APIs to sync customer, product, and order information between the two platforms.
  • Pros and cons:
Pros
Cons
Fast and reliable

High costs
Ease of use

Can connect with many other applications

Scalable and flexible

User-friendly interface

No coding knowledge

Sync more data fields than the Square extension

Use custom code

You can also entrust your internal developers with the integration work or outsource it to an external service provider if you don’t have an in-house technical team to build and maintain the integration.

  • How it works: Based on the analysis of your business requirements, developers can build a highly customized solution to satisfy your specific needs. Developers build codes needed to integrate Magento with Square POS and take full control over the integration process. They can monitor, manage, and handle any issues to improve the integration performance.
  • Pros and cons:
Pros
Cons

Highly tailor-made for your business

High costs

Dedicated support 

Time-consuming
Require in-depth technical knowledge
Difficult to scale

5 tips for a smooth Magento Square POS integration

5-tips-for-a-smooth-magento-square-pos-integration

Source: SAAS Integrator

Below are several tips you should follow to seamlessly integrate Magento vs Square POS.

  • Identify the integration purposes: Before integrating these two systems, you should determine what you want to achieve with the integration. Clear objectives help you assess how the Square POS Magento integration works to your business’ advantage, so you can improve its performance properly.
  • Design data mapping and workflows: Planning the data points you want to sync in advance streamlines the data flow between Square POS and Magento. You should also decide the data sync frequencies, such as real time, near real time, or twice every hour, and the sync directions whether one-way or two-way. With well-planned workflows, you can minimize the risks of burdening your systems with unnecessary data, which might slow down the data transfer and affect system stability.
  • Clean data: It’s also a good idea to clean data before integrating Magento with Square POS. Removing incorrect, duplicated, erroneous, and irrelevant data prevents low-quality information from entering your systems, thus speeding up data transfer and ensuring you can extract helpful insights from complete and accurate data.
  • Select a suitable integration method: Researching before choosing an integration method can help you save lots of time and money later on. Your chosen method not only should have the features needed for Square POS Adobe Commerce integration, but it also should fit with your financial capacity. Besides, it’s better to choose a solution that’s flexible, customizable, and scalable enough to adapt to your changing business requirements.
  • Test and maintain: Testing the integration allows you to detect and solve any integration issues before it goes live and causes annoyance to your customers. Also, make sure that you allocate enough resources to track and maintain the integration regularly to timely identify errors or make necessary improvements.

4 Drawbacks of using Magento Square POS connector

Connectors are a convenient and easy-to-use way to integrate Magento with Square POS. On the flip side, using connectors has several disadvantages worth considering.

  • Unstable connections: As you connect Square POS with Magento indirectly via an external connector, you can’t guarantee the connection is always stable for data transfer. The connector can be buggy or malfunctioning sometimes, leading to data sync disruption, missing data, or data mismatch between the two systems.
  • High costs: Using a connector to integrate Square POS with Magento drives up your business expenses. Besides the monthly and processing fees for Square POS, you need to pay a considerable amount for the connector as well. Most connectors charge subscription prices which increase depending on your order and product number, adding up to huge costs in the long term.
  • Many contact points: With a 3rd-party connector involved, you don’t have full control over your systems and the Square POS Magento integration. You have to rely on the POS and connector providers to maintain, detect, and handle any arising errors, which might be time-consuming and ineffective.
  • Security issues: Although many connectors employ advanced security technologies like encryption, using them means exposing your data to another party, which might put you at risk of data breaches and other security concerns.

A Square and Magento connector alternative — Magento-native POS

You might hesitate to use a connector for Square Magento integration due to its drawbacks. In this case, employing a Magento-native POS such as Magestore Magento POS eliminates the need for a connector while ensuring seamless data syncs between your online and offline stores, thus offering you long-term benefits and huge business cost-savings.
Let’s take an overview of how Magestore POS differs from Square POS.

Magestore Magento POS
Lightspeed POS
Direct integration: 

  • Magestore POS is natively compatible with the Magento platform to ensure uninterrupted data movement in real time between your online stores and multiple physical locations. 
Indirect integration: 

  • On the contrary, you have to purchase a connector to link Square POS with Magento, which results in high costs, complex operations, and unstable data syncs.
  • You can use the free Square extension for Magento to connect the two platforms. However, as this extension has limited functionality, it can’t sync all of your expected business data, including key data like orders and loyalty points.
    Work with unlimited payment processors:

    • Magestore can easily integrate with dozens of payment processing services, including Square, Stripe, Adyen, and PayPal to offer customers different payment methods. 
    • Moreover, Magestore POS connects seamlessly with numerous 3rd-party apps and systems to enrich its functionality for future growth.
    Only work with Square Payments:

    • Unlike Magestore POS, Square POS only works with the Square Payment gateway to process transactions, thus restricting the payment options you can provide your customers. 
    Affordable pricing:

    • Magestore Magento 2 POS adopts one-time custom pricing, which charges you based on your business needs, store numbers, and support levels. This makes Magestore POS more affordable, flexible, and cost-effective for businesses of different sizes, especially when your business grows. 
    • You don’t have to pay implementation and transaction fees. Magestore POS also charges no fees for extra users and devices. 
    High recurring price:

    • In contrast, you have to pay monthly fees for Square POS and Square payment processing services, which increase in line with your transaction volumes and store quantity. 
    • For example, if you choose the Plus plan for Square Retail POS and use SKU IQ to connect with Magento, below is what you have to pay monthly for your 2 stores:
    • Square POS monthly fees: $178/ month for 2 locations
    • SKU IQ Plus plan: $89/ month
    • Total: $267/ month and $3,204/ year

    Read more:

    Conclusion

    Small, medium, and large retailers can reap rich dividends with Square POS Magento integration. Connecting these two systems helps simplify key business processes, manage multi-channel inventory, and deliver a smooth omnichannel shopping experience to customers. 

    There are many ways to integrate Magento with Square POS, including using the Square extension for Magento, 3rd-party connectors, and custom code. Although connectors are the most popular integration methods, they have certain drawbacks that worry retailers. To eliminate the potential disadvantages of using a connector, a more optimal solution is to use a Magento-native POS for stable and seamless data transfer. A native POS for Adobe Commerce allows you to connect online and offline stores more conveniently rather than using a connector to link a standalone POS with Magento for the same purpose.

    Whichever way you choose, make sure it serves your business purposes and helps you achieve your expected objectives. 

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    Author Jackie Tran

    Jackie is Magestore's Strategic Marketing Lead with over 5 years of digital transformation experience. An acknowledged authority in eCommerce and Magento, she creates insightful content to unravel digital complexities, covering Magento best practices, eCommerce trends, and integration strategies. Read her curated insights on the Magestore blog for a profound understanding of eCommerce, offering a clear path to retail success. Jackie's content provides practical, friendly guidance to navigate the ever-evolving digital commerce landscape.

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