The Paypal card is issued only in North America as far as I know. Europeans or people from other countries cannot get it because Paypal is not recognized as a bank in those countries, thus it cannot issue credit or debit card.

That's a shame! Though, I suppose that's one more reason to be wary of PayPal. Any company offering banking services that the majority of countries don't recognize as a bank is not a company that you should trust with your money.

SO did my invoice work ok? i know you said in your email you were going to contact Square about invoicing out of the US

Yes! Your invoice worked perfectly.

According to the enthusiastic Square person I talked to, the main issue is a technical one relating to the zip code. As long as you can put in a post code, it should work; I was told that the UK, Canada, Australia, and other similar countries have no issues. However, I was also given some steps to take if any of my customers have issues.

Worst case scenario, I should be able to take their credit card information and manually enter it—if they're comfortable with that.

Square is pretty great. We're thinking of switching our current POS system at the small company I work for to Square. I guess it depends on the fees they charge, lol.

So far Square has been very consistent (and similar to PayPal): 2.9% + 30¢ for most charges, though the fee is slightly higher for a few cases. They don't charge any monthly fee for their basic service, but they do offer some service upgrades that could be useful for shops (not so much for l'il ol' me~). Overall I haven't been caught off guard by anything. :}

Honestly that covers the $1 we charge for running a card, so huh. Very interesting. COOL.

Also, your first card reader is on them. They ship it to you for free just for opening an account~

FYI square has so far been way less of a pain than our old point of sale system, so, yay you :D

Glad to hear it, darling~ <3

Oh I was thinking of making an account there but don't know anyone that used it to learn about it.

Is Square similar to PayPal?

There are ways that it is similar and ways that it is quite different.

PayPal is, in essence, a banking ecosystem that holds and transfers money for you. You use PayPal to pay other PayPal users and generally keep your information private when doing things like buying stuff online (for example, eBay, where PayPal originated).

Square is a payment processor. Unlike PayPal, you don't use Square to pay people, you only use it to accept payments—and that means your clients don't need to sign up for Square to pay you. When you take payments through Square, they schedule deposits to your bank account for you (or you can instantly deposit your money 24/7 for a small additional fee). They also have advanced business tools like loyalty programs and so forth. Also unlike PayPal, Square is much more well-insured, so they don't need to place the burden of buyer protection on the seller. You'll need to give Square your personal information, but you can hide that information on your invoices/receipts.

The only way I would say they are similar is their invoicing system, but Square's is much more robust than PayPal because Square was originally designed for storefronts and mobile sales where it's important to have specific products, inventory tracking and so forth—all of which Square has available.