Publish your App to the App Marketplace
Millions of sellers use the Square App Marketplace to discover and install apps that they rely on daily to run their businesses. As a Square App Partner, you can offer and monetize your apps directly to Square sellers in the App Marketplace. Partnership gives you the following advantages:
Access to our technical team using Slack
Insights into the performance of your app on the App Marketplace
Direct access to new product launches
Complete the following steps to get your application published in the Square App Marketplace. You should start this process while your application is still in development because elements of the process might identify required changes in your application code or user interface.
Complete the App Partnership application to start the process of getting your application into the App Marketplace. After the partnership application is processed and the Partnerships team has contacted you, you are granted access to a self-service application submission tool in the Developer Dashboard.
Did you know?
Square also has a Solutions Partner program. A Square-certified solutions partner is listed on the Square preferred solution partner page and builds bespoke solutions for individual Square sellers.
Use Square SDKs and developer tools to build an application that you can list on the Square App Marketplace. Follow the Square App Marketplace requirements, including the OAuth authentication protocol, as you develop your application. The approval of your application depends on whether you met these requirements.
Did you know?
If you are an active partner and have already built your app, you can get the testing process started by Submitting your application ID with the context "App Testing / QA". Indicate that your app is ready to test. The Partnerships team will reply via email with the next steps.
As you plan your development, you should set aside time to write a wireframe document that describes how you are integrating Square into your application and what the Square API is being used for. The wireframe document should showcase the application and demonstrate that it meets App Marketplace API usage requirements.
Important
The wireframe document is a required part of the application submission process and needs to be accurate and complete. It is submitted to the Partnerships team for review, feedback, and approval.
It is a good practice to start your wireframe document when you start development. After you add a Square API flow (for example, the OAuth flow), you should add that flow to the wireframe document. When you have all Square API calls coded and a complete wireframe diagram, you should submit that wireframe to the Partnerships team to begin the review process. The review might identify needed changes, additions, or suggested improvements to your codebase or UI.
In the wireframe document review, the Square Partnerships team reviews the wireframe for outstanding issues with your application design. To pass the review, your application needs to meet the App Marketplace API usage requirements.
Use the content submission tool to draft the content for your App Marketplace landing page. To draft your content, get Your application ID. Find your application ID on the Credentials page of your Square application in the Developer Dashboard. Next, submit the application ID to the Partnerships team. The team verifies that you have created an application registration in the Developer Dashboard. On verification, you are granted access to use the content submission tool. You can then find the tool by opening your application registration in the Developer Dashboard and choosing App Listing in the left pane under App Marketplace. You can start to draft your App Marketplace marketing content while your team is building your application. For guidance on creating effective marketing content, visit the Partner Marketing Resource Hub.
After your wireframe document has been completed, submitted for review, and approved, you should expect to complete the following tasks:
Complete your application. In this step, you get your application to the code-complete and release-candidate status. At this point, it is ready for quality assurance testing.
Quality assurance testing. The Partnerships team creates a QA checklist based on the scope of your Square API usage. You run all required test cases against your code-complete application. All test cases need to be completed before you submit your completed QA checklist for QA testing and approval. To submit the checklist with the I have a question about.. field set to "App testing / QA", provide your completed QA checklist in an emailed reply to the team.
Important
Be sure to provide the testing credentials in the QA checklist on a credentials tab. Square uses the credentials to sign in and run QA tests on your application.
Square-side QA. Let Square know you have completed your QA testing by submitting your status with the question field set to "App testing / QA". The Partnership team will then start their initial QA review.
Follow-up QA. If there are further requests for you to make updates or additions to your application, you need to address them before the team can launch your application.
After the QA process is complete, you will receive an email from the Partnerships team notifying you that your app is ready to be published. Publication does not happen automatically after QA is complete. You need to contact the Partnerships team to schedule the publication of your listing. Square creates an App Marketplace listing based on the approved content you created in the submission tool and then publishes your application.
After launching the application, you might choose to increase the scope of your application by adding Square API calls. In this case, you need to update your wireframe document and submitting it to the Partnerships team for a limited round of QA testing on the new scope.
When you are ready to submit any of the deliverables described in this topic, you use the Square Contact Partnerships form. Use the I have a question about.. field to provide the context for your submission. You should choose either "App Marketplace" or "App testing Q/A". Use the Description field to tell Square what you want to submit. When you receive an email from Square in response to the form, provide your submission in the body of the email if appropriate. Otherwise, attach your submission to your reply.
This is an example of how you submit deliverables to the Partnerships team at various stages of the app publication process:
The following resources give you the guidance you need to get your application approved for publication:
Get help acquiring more users:
Resources for marketing your application
Requirements and best practices for partners to feature Square in co-marketing.
Add a tracking cookie to your OAuth authorization URL to generate better usage statistics.
If you need more assistance, contact Developer Support or ask for help in the Developer Forums.