Square Adds Same-Day Bank Deposits for Merchants

Square will enable sellers to make daily bank deposits, adding another in a series of merchant-focused perks designed to diversify revenue streams and sweeten the company's appeal to businesses.

The feature, called Scheduled Deposit, enables sellers to make same-day deposits for a fee that totals 1% of the total deposit amount. The program is designed to avoid wait times for merchants, and Square reports test users' deposits are an average of 30% larger than Square's existing Instant Deposit service. Instant Deposit has existed for about a year, and Square merchants have completed more than two million deposits in that time, the company reports.

To use Scheduled Deposit, users tap on their apps, and can also time their transactions to coincide with the end of their business day. Deposits can be made on business days, weekends and holidays.

Since debuting its mobile point of sale hardware to enable small merchants to accept payments on smartphones, Square's deployments have increasingly focused on building merchant services on top of payment acceptance. Earlier this year, it recast its Cash P-to-P app to evolve it into a tool for business payments. Square has additionally focused on improving its merchant lending business.

Square has also updated its marketing strategy to focus on building a footprint in favorable local markets, and has offered installment payments to push adoption of its chip card reader.