Square excludes liability for direct damages as well as indirect ones, which goes beyond the usual industry disclaimer, and it flatly refuses responsibility for losses from hacking or unauthorized access to your account, a serious gap for a payments platform. Whatever survives those exclusions is capped at the greater of three months of fees Square earned from you or 500 dollars. Everything is provided as is with all warranties disclaimed.
Square can amend the terms at any time with whatever notice it alone deems reasonable, and simply posting a new version on its website can be enough, with notices deemed received within 24 hours. Continuing to use the services counts as acceptance, and your only real alternative is to close your account. Subscription fee increases at least get a promise of reasonable advance notice.
Disputes go to binding individual arbitration with a class action ban and jury trial waiver, and you must complete a mandatory notice and conference process before filing anything. Two clauses are especially harsh: the terms declare you are not a consumer, putting you on the pricier commercial fee schedule with arbitrator hourly fees split evenly, and any claim must be brought within one year. Real mitigations exist: a 30-day written opt-out from arbitration, preserved small claims court access, remote hearings or hearings near your hometown, and structured mass arbitration procedures.
The indemnity is entirely one sided and unusually broad: you must defend Square, its processors, and their affiliates against claims, tax assessments, penalties, and attorney fees arising from your breach, your use of the services, third party claims from your own customers, anyone using your login, and even any transaction Square processed for you. Square offers you no reciprocal protection anywhere in the document. Separate clauses add full tax indemnities on top.
Square can suspend or terminate your account at any time for any reason, with no stated appeal process, and after termination it may delete your data with no liability to you. In sanctions-related cases your funds can be held for an indefinite period, and if account ownership is ever disputed, Square declares itself the sole and final decision maker. You can close your account yourself at any time, which is the main user-friendly point.
The detailed rules live in a separate Privacy Notice and Data Processing Agreement, so this document itself gives you few concrete protections. What it does say tilts against you: Square disclaims any guarantee that your personal information is safe, states you provide it at your own risk, and takes broad advance authorization to share your account and transaction data with law enforcement whenever it reasonably suspects wrongdoing. Marketing texts and calls have opt-outs, which is a modest positive.
You keep ownership of your content, but you grant Square a perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, sublicensable license to use it in any media for any reason, including on Cash App and with third parties Square picks in its sole discretion. Even if you delete content or close your account, copies may persist in archives and caches. Square can also remove any content at any time without notice, and any feedback you submit can be used freely without payment.
You are bound the moment you use any Square service, not only when you click accept, and your agreement automatically pulls in roughly 20 additional documents such as Payment Terms, AI Terms, and Bitcoin Terms. Some services like Bitcoin features and Neighborhoods on Cash App may be switched on automatically. On the positive side, the terms include plain-language annotations, a clear effective date, and links to each incorporated document.
Subscription mechanics are reasonably fair: you can cancel any time from your account settings, keep access through the billing period, and get advance notice of price changes. The downsides are that continued use after a fee change counts as agreement, fees already paid are never refunded, and Square reserves the right to collect what you owe by pulling money from your transaction proceeds, your Square balance, or your linked bank account regardless of your chosen payment method. You also take on full responsibility, and an indemnity, for taxes.