Do Square credit card readers allow for personal use?
What I should have done in the first place was just ask them.  From their customer support team: Thanks for writing in and for your interest in Square. It is perfectly acceptable to use Square for personal business, such as a yard sale. You do not need to have a registered business to take advantage of Square and the ability to accept credit cards. Just please note that it is against our Terms of Service to process prepaid cards, gift cards or your own credit card using your own Square account. Additionally, you may not use Square as a money transfer system. For every payment processed through Square, you must provide a legitimate good or service. Please let me know if you have any additional concerns. "Yes. From their TOS: ""By creating a Square Account, you confirm that you are either a legal resident of the United States, a United States citizen, or a business entity...""." My husband used this device at work in an organization/club that collects dues for fundraisers. The fundraisers are only for the club. So I think that is not business at all. They have no business tax id#, etc? and they use it for personal reasons when collecting money via Cc#'s if this helps you. I used square in the past for personal yard sale and they did not transfer balance to my bank acct because they told me it was against their policy and I had to have a business license that they could either refund the credit cards i process or keep the money. So they kept it I never got it back. I don't recommend anybody to use square.
"First I want to be sure Op understands how ""Credit Utilization"" is scored as this confuses many folks here in the US.  There is no ""reward"" for charging money or carrying balances, only penalty.  If you have one credit card with a $10,000 limit and owe $8,000  you have an 80% utilization which will signal to banks that you are having financial difficulties.  (Anything over 30% on a single card is usually penalized significantly.)  The ideal utilization is something around 0, which is in the ballpark of the 5% Op mentioned.  Again there is never any direct benefit to your credit of spending a penny on any of your credit cards.*   Banks offer the best rates to people that pay off their balances each month or don't use their cards in the first place.  Why? Despite the system being imperfect in many ways, utilization is a good indicator.  Example: If you have a card with a  $10,000 limit and pay it off every month that speaks to you being a good risk. If you compared this person to the person above, who do you think would be the most likely to pay back a car loan? Finally, Utilization is a small part of the credit score.  I would call it more of a ""hurdle"" than a factor, at least concerning good rates and approvals.  Most of your credit, is based on length of history, paying on time, and having multiple types of credit. Real life example: I had a relative that had perfect payment history for decades.  They got divorced and started accumulating a balance.  The person got other cards with 0% apr to avoid the interest, but their balance only grew.  -They had to use the card to make ends meet, etc.  (3 kids, single parent)  They ended up filing a sizable bankruptcy a few years later.  This was one of the most responsible people I've ever known.  (Yes that statement will seem far fetched to someone else.  It was almost impossible to get them to file bankruptcy, even though there was no way to ever pay the money back.) The point?  Utilization shows a more 'current' picture than some of the other portions due.  -  Had those banks used the high utilization as a warning sign they would have saved a lot of money.   A 'fun' way of looking at credit: Sometimes I describe credit score as a popularity contest.  If you really 'need' money banks are not going to help you.  However if your credit shows everyone is lining up to loan you money, other banks are going to want in too.  ""Banks only make loans to people that don't need them."" *** Spending a lot on Credit Cards does sometimes have the indirect effect of getting balance increases that could have a slight increase in your score.  This happens  less than it did prior to the financial fiasco.  Also the effect of this is on the score negligible unless carrying a balance.  ( And the person carrying a balance also has a lower score anyways.)  Additionally someone charging less could probably get a similar raise if they asked for it.  (Raises vary greatly by issuer.))" Most business credit cards do not report to the personal credit report unless the person pays the card late. Given that fact, any debt carried on these cards does not hurt the credit score if it is not reported. You can carry credit card debt on these cards without hurting your credit score. Just apply for business credit cards now to start building this segment of your credit. My view is from the Netherlands, a EU country. Con: Credit cards are more risky. If someone finds your card, they can use it for online purchases without knowing any PIN, just by entering the card number, expiration date, and security code on the back. Worse, sometimes that information is stored in databases, and those get stolen by hackers! Also, you can have agreed to do periodic payments on some website and forgot about them, stopped using the service, and be surprised about the charge later. Debit cards usually need some kind of device that requires your PIN to do online payments (the ones I have in the Netherlands do, anyway), and automated periodic payments are authorized at your bank where you can get an overview of the currently active ones. Con: Banks get a percentage of each credit card payment. Unlike debit cards where companies usually pay a tiny fixed fee for each transaction (of, say, half a cent), credit card payments usually cost them a percentage and it comes to much more, a significant part of the profit margin. I feel this is just wrong. Con: automatic monthly payment can come at an unexpected moment With debit cards, the amount is withdrawn immediately and if the money isn't there, you get an error message allowing you to pay some other way (credit card after all, other bank account, cash, etc). When a recent monthly payment from my credit card was due to be charged from my bank account recently, someone else had been paid from it earlier that day and the money wasn't there. So I had to pay interest, on something I bought weeks ago... Pro: Credit cards apparently have some kind of insurance. I've never used this and don't know how it works, but apparently you can get your money back easily after fraudulent charges. Pro: Credit cards can be more easily used internationally for online purchases I don't know how it is with Visa or MC-issued debit cards, but many US sites accept only cards that have number/expiration date/security code and thus my normal bank account debit card isn't useable. Conclusion: definitely have one, but only use it when absolutely necessary. Set him up to take credit cards just as a convenience thing, and he can advertise that he accepts all major credit cards.    I've been helping my mother set up farmers to do this at the Farmer's  Market she manages.  [Squareup](https://squareup.com/) is ridiculously easy to set up.  You just need a smart phone (iphone or android based) and one of their little square reader thingies that fit into the audio jack, an email, and bank account routing info.  Set up time is ten minutes the first day, 3 minutes once the confirmation info is accounted for.  You can buy the readers at Walgreens...Best Buy...lots of random places, and Squareup reimburses you the $10 cost of the reader so it ends up being free.  I made a test account and I was able to receive funds directly into my bank account within about 4 days. "It's the inevitable result of the Fair, Isaac Company deciding to sell access to credit scores to the general public: some marketing dude at one of the banks thought, ""Wouldn't it be a great idea if we could use 'free' access to FICO scores as a differentiator for our CCs?"" And, because most humans play follow the leader, soon enough, other banks were paying FICO a license to present FICO scores to their card holders." "Square charges a 2.75% fee (which the merchant pays), so you would be losing money if you only got a 1.5% cashback bonus. I would guess that the real reason Square prohibits you from getting cash is because of Visa/MC, state and federal regulations.  Visa/MC probably prohibit it for regular merchants due primarily to laws that are designed to prevent money-laundering. Certain merchants (like casinos) are allowed to give you cash advances against a credit card, but regular merchants are not allowed to do this. It is much more difficult to get Visa/MC to approve merchants to handle cash advances and they are subject to many additional regulations.  Services like Western Union will let you send cash with a regular credit card, but they are classified as ""money transmitters"" and must comply with additional state and federal regulations. If Square were to allow cash advances, this would likely subject them to a bunch of additional regulations.  It would cost them more to comply with these regulations and is outside their business model, so they simply prohibit it." PocketSmith is another tool you might like to consider. No personal banking details are required, but you can upload your transactions in a variety of formats. Pocketsmith is interesting because it really focus on your future cash flow, and the main feature of the interface is around having a calendar(s) where you easily enter one off or repetitive expenses/income. http://www.pocketsmith.com/ Have you considered a service that allows you to generate credit card numbers on the fly? DoNotTrackMe allows you to generate a CC number on the fly, for a specific amount.  If the vendor tries to charge more, it will fail.  If it gets stolen, it's useless. I don't know the specific fees off hand, but they have an annual fee for the feature.  Still, for the protection, doesn't seem like a bad way to go. Note: I have no affiliation with DNTM, I'm just a very happy user of their email protection products.  The Masked Cards faq is here.