A question we get asked a lot now is whether we recommend that our photographers use Squareup.com or PayPal.com to collect money from their clients. Until recently, we actually recommended both. PayPal was best for online orders, Square was best for in person orders when a check isn’t a good option.

Now that PayPal has its own credit card swiper, we are back to recommending just PayPal, which keeps all transactions on one account, making life much easier when it comes time to pay the tax man.

The fees when swiping a card are so similar that they are almost negligible. Square is 2.75%. PayPal is 2.7%.  On $2,000 of orders, this will be a difference of $1.

For online orders, PayPal is 2.9% + .30 cents and Square does not offer this service.

Of course, if you are doing larger amounts of online transactions (averaging over $1,500/month),we recommend using a pro merchant account such as Authorize.net.