Square offering merchants $12K in free payment processing with Apple Pay

Square has become a key Apple Pay partner. The San Francisco-based company has made a big bet on mobile payments — it wants its brand to be synonymous with them — and is now offering incentives to merchants to encourage promotion and use of Apple Pay. Square will enable local merchants to process $12,000 worth of payments for free if customers use their iPhones to pay. That’s worth about $350 in processing-fee savings to the local merchants. This new promotion follows a successful Square-Apple Pay promotion in Portland, Oregon in 2016. Square is providing marketing materials to help merchants educate their customers about Apple Pay and must have a requisite in-store signage to qualify for the processing credits. This is essentially an incentivized national rollout of the Portland promotion. Square explained, “The percentage of card transactions from contactless payments at Portland Square sellers tripled over the course of the campaign.”