App Marketplace Frequently Asked Questions

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General questions

Find answers to questions about the nature of the Square App Marketplace

Square sellers use the Square App Marketplace to discover and connect apps to their Square accounts that they rely on daily to run their businesses. As a Square App Partner, you can offer and monetize your Square-integrated apps directly to Square sellers in the App Marketplace. Sellers are looking for apps that integrate with Square, leveraging data and functionality of their Square ecosystem, to further automate, streamline, and scale their day-to-day operations.

When you publish your app in the App Marketplace, you become an app partner. Some developers and larger development companies can apply for additional partnership benefits, such as a dedicated partner manager and profit sharing. For information about the full benefits of app partnership at Square, see the app partnership page.

Integrating with Square means that your app uses Square APIs to leverage the capabilities of Square in your app. For example, you can use a Square payment form to accept a card payment for Square to process, show a list of the seller's customers, or generate a report of completed orders. To use your app, Square sellers need to OAuth into your app and grant it access to their Square account.

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Build and publish an app for the App Marketplace

Find answers to questions about publishing your application in the App Marketplace

Any developer can use Square APIs to build an app and then use Square's self-service portal to publish it in the App Marketplace, provided they follow Square terms of service and complete the required steps. Get started by logging in to your Square Developer account and creating an app in the Developer Dashboard.

If you publish your app in the App Marketplace, you can increase adoption by providing compelling value to Square sellers. The general steps involved with publishing an app include:

  1. Building and integrating your app with Square.
  2. Accepting Square App Marketplace Partnerships Terms during the submission process.
  3. Completing an integration check and QA testing with Square.
  4. Creating and submitting your app listing content.

For more information about this process, see Publish your App to the App Marketplace

Publishing an app in the App Marketplace, makes you an app partner. Some developers and larger companies can apply for additional benefits, such as a dedicated partner manager and profit share. For more information about the full benefits of partnership with Square, see the App Partner page.

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I am working with the Square partnerships team to sign a custom partnerships contract.

While you still accept the App Marketplace partnerships terms as part of the app submission process, any custom partnerships contract that you sign with Square will take precedence over these base terms.

The time it takes to publish your application in the App Marketplace can vary based on several factors:

  1. Application readiness

    Developers who have integrated their app with Square APIs and validated that their app meets Square's App Marketplace API Usage Requirements have the shortest time to launch. Those who have not work out bugs yet, or apps that have not integrated all required APIs take longer to launch and have a more involved review process.

  2. Integration check (Quality Assurance)

    All apps go through a QA process to ensure they meet technical and usability requirements ahead of launch. Should your app not meet Square requirements, expect to spend some additional time rectifying any findings prior to getting approval to launch.

  3. App listing content

    Those who work on their App Marketplace listing content in parallel with their build accelerate their launch timeline. Square recommends you submit your marketing content at the same time as you submit your app for technical review.

During the submission process, Square asks you for the current markets where you operate and can support. You have the option to publish your app in one to many of these markets.

You can engage Square for support in these channels:

  • Developer Discord - Chat with Square developer support on Discord.
  • Developer Forums - Ask questions in the Square developer forums.
  • Developer Support - Contact Developer Support.
  • Square Developer YouTube - Check out Square's step-by-step training videos on YouTube.
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Manage your published app

Find answers to questions about reviews, ratings, and making updates to your application after it is published in the App Marketplace.

Sellers with a verified identity can leave a review 24 hours after they install your application. Ratings are on a scale of one to five and reviewers can leave comments.

Reviews are always available on the app detail page in your Square developer account. If you have fewer than 10 ratings and reviews, the average rating is not visible on other pages, categories, or content.

You can look at reviews on the Developer Dashboard by navigating to the production application listed in the Square App Marketplace and sort the reviews by date or rating. Sorting lets you prioritize your review responses. You can also gather product feedback and capture testimonials.

For more information about application reviews, see Managing Application Reviews.

Reviews are always available on your app detail page in your Square developer account. If you have less than 10 ratings and reviews, then the average rating is not visible on other pages, categories, or content.

You or your application administrator can view and reply to reviews in the Developer Dashboard, in the app detail section. You should reply to negative reviews to address feedback. This can help improve your ratings. A seller can edit their review at any time, which lets them improve their review after you've addressed their feedback.

For more information about application reviews, see Managing Application Reviews.

Currently, the user who owns the developer account where the app was built needs to log in to access the app. In the future, we will introduce additional features so that you can invite additional team members from your organization to collaborate. Until then, if you have questions about your account or need support in changing the owner of your app to another account, please contact Developer & App Marketplace Support.

To make changes to your app, please contact Developer and App Marketplace Support. This will open a request with Square and they will determine further actions that may be needed. Depending on the scope of your changes, this may include resubmitting your app to Square for another round of testing.

If you’ve already published your app and need to make changes, you can log in to your Square developer account, navigate to your production app, and edit the content within the app listing section.

For information about app marketplace listing best practices, see Create an App Marketplace Listing.

All API updates are captured in the Changelog.

In addition, if you’d like to stay up to date with everything that’s new, you can subscribe to both our app marketplace and partnerships newsletters.

Please contact Developer & App Marketplace Support and request to delist your app.

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Promote your integration

Find answers to questions about getting your application noticed by the sellers who are looking for Square integrations.

Congratulations on getting your app live on the Square App Marketplace! Please reference our co-marketing documentation for partners, which contains best practices and resources for:

  1. Creating effective launch emails
  2. Spreading the word on social media
  3. Promoting the integration on your website

In addition, we encourage our partners to join the Square Seller Community, a public online forum where business owners can find guidance on how to use the platform to grow your business. Here you can directly engage with Square Sellers and raise awareness and recognition for your business and integration with Square.

Please reference our co-marketing documentation for partners, which contains best practices and resources for:

  1. Creating effective launch emails
  2. Spreading the word on social media
  3. Promoting the integration on your website

Square features recently launched apps within the New Apps section on the Square App Marketplace homepage and in addition our Partnerships Newsletter contains a recently launched section where your app may be featured. Square will select certain apps for additional joint marketing, depending on seller demand and respective use-cases supported by your app.

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Referral earnings and revenue share to Square

Find answers to questions about earning money from your Square integration and how Square gets a portion of your subscription revenue.

Developers that accept Square’s App Marketplace Partnerships Terms and proceed to submit and publish their app through our self-service workflow become eligible for a revenue share on the referrals they make to Square that become Square sellers. Upon publishing your app, you will receive additional instructions on how to set up referral links that attribute any referred traffic back to your company.

In addition, you are responsible for a revenue share to Square for subscription revenue that you collect from Square sellers that become subscribers of your app via referral from the Square App Marketplace.

Please note, for partners that have a custom contract with Square, the economics section of your contract will contain any specific economic terms for your partnership with Square.

For developers that accept Square’s App Marketplace Partnerships Terms and proceed to submit and publish their app through our self-service workflow, Square collects a 20% revenue share of subscription revenue you collect from Square sellers who sign up or subscribe to your app via referral from the Square App Marketplace.

Note

For partners that have a custom contract with Square, the economics section of your contract will contain any specific economic terms for your partnership with Square.


For more information on revenue share and referral earnings, see App Marketplace Revenue Sharing.