Use Custom Attributes for Merchants

Applies to: Merchant Custom Attributes API

Learn how to create and manage custom attribute values for Merchant objects.

Merchant-related custom attributes are used to store additional properties or metadata on Merchant objects. A custom attribute is based on a custom attribute definition in a Square seller account. After the definition is created, the custom attribute can be set for that merchant. For an overview about how merchant-related custom attributes work, see Custom Attributes for Merchants.

An individual custom attribute is accessed using the merchant_id and key.

.../v2/merchants/{merchant_id}/custom-attributes/{key}

A custom attribute is represented by a CustomAttribute object. Custom attributes obtain a key identifier, the visibility setting, allowed data types, and other properties from a custom attribute definition, which is represented by a CustomAttributeDefinition object.

The following is an example custom attribute:

{
  "custom_attribute": {
    "key": "business-owner",
    "version": 1,
    "updated_at": "2023-01-10T21:13:48Z",
    "value": "Adam Cortez",
    "created_at": "2023-01-10T21:13:48Z",
    "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
  }
}

The following table shows the core properties of a custom attribute:

To set the value of a custom attribute for a merchant, call UpsertMerchantCustomAttribute and provide the following information:

• merchant_id - The ID of the Merchant object that represents the target merchant.
• custom_attribute - The custom attribute with the following fields:
  • key - The key of the custom attribute to create or update.
  • If the requesting application isn't the definition owner, the visibility field value of the custom attribute must be VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY or VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES.
  • value - The value of the custom attribute, which must conform to the schema specified by the definition. For more information, see Supported data types.
  • version - The current version of the custom attribute, included to enable optimistic concurrency when updating a value that was previously set for the merchant. If this isn't important for your application, version can be set to –1. For any other values, the request fails with a BAD_REQUEST error. Square increments the version number each time the definition is updated.
• idempotency_key - A unique ID for the request that can be optionally included to ensure idempotency.

The following example request sets the value for a String-type custom attribute. The key value in this example is business-owner.

The following is an example response:

{
  "custom_attribute": {
    "key": "business-owner",
    "version": 1,
    "updated_at": "2023-01-10T21:13:48Z",
    "value": "Adam Cortez",
    "created_at": "2023-01-10T21:13:48Z",
    "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
  }
}

During upsert operations, Square validates the provided value against the schema specified by the definition.

After a custom attribute is upserted, Square invokes the merchant.custom_attribute.owned.updated and merchant.custom_attribute.visible.updated webhooks.

You can set a corresponding custom attribute for a merchant by providing a value that conforms to the schema specified by the custom attribute definition. The size of this field cannot exceed 5 KB.

The following sections contain UpsertMerchantCustomAttribute requests for each supported data type.

A string with up to 1000 UTF-8 characters. Empty strings are allowed.

An email address consisting of ASCII characters that matches the regular expression for the HTML5 email type.

A string representation of a phone number in E.164 format. For example, +17895551234.

An Address object. For information about Address fields, see Working with Addresses. You must provide a complete Address object in every upsert request.

A date in ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DD.

A string representation of the date and time in the ISO 8601 format, starting with the year, followed by the month, day, hour, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds. For example, 2022-07-10 15:00:00.000.

A duration as defined by the ISO 8601 ABNF. For example, "P3Y6M4DT12H30M5S".

A true or false value.

A string representation of an integer or decimal with up to five digits of precision. Negative numbers are denoted using a - prefix.

A selection from a set of named options.

When working with a Selection-type custom attribute, you need to get the schema from the custom attribute definition. The schema shows the mapping between the named options and Square-assigned UUIDs and the maximum number of allowed selections.

Reading the schema

The following is an excerpt of an example Selection-type custom attribute definition:

{
  "custom_attribute_definition": {
    ...
    "schema": {
      "$schema": "https://developer-production-s.squarecdn.com/meta-schemas/v1/selection.json",
      "maxItems": 3,
      "type": "array", 
      "uniqueItems": true,
      "items": {
        "names": [
          "Option 1",
          "Option 2",
          "Option 3"
        ],
        "enum": [
          "9492bdda-ab4d-4eeb-8496-0986c8f78499",   // UUID for "Option 1"
          "6b96fba7-d8a5-ae72-48f4-8c3ee875633f",   // UUID for "Option 2"
          "4032c1a2-d749-4c75-9c30-be6472cd2e08"    // UUID for "Option 3"
        ]
      }
    },
    ...
  }
}

• The maxItems field represents the maximum number of allowed selections for the custom attribute value.
• The items field contains two arrays: names and enum. The options in the names field map by index to the UUIDs in the enum field. The first option maps to the first UUID, the second option maps to the second UUID, and so on.

Setting a Selection value

To set a Selection value for a merchant, provide the target UUID (that maps to the target named option) in the value field. For this data type, value is an array that can contain zero or more UUIDs, up to the number specified in maxItems.

The following request sets two selections for a custom attribute by providing two UUIDs:

The following request sets an empty selection by providing an empty array:

If necessary, you can update the maximum number of allowed selections and the set of predefined named options in the custom attribute definition.To learn more, see Updating the Selection schema.

To create or update one or more custom attributes for one or more merchants, call BulkUpsertMerchantCustomAttributes. This endpoint accepts a values map with 1 to 25 objects that each contain:

• An arbitrary ID for the individual upsert request, which corresponds to an entry in the response that has the same ID. The ID must be unique within the BulkUpsertMerchantCustomAttributes request.
• An individual upsert request with the information needed to create or update a custom attribute for a merchant.

During upsert operations, Square validates each provided value against the schema specified by the definition. The version field is only supported for update operations.

The following BulkUpsertMerchantCustomAttributes request includes four upsert requests that set four custom attributes on different merchants:

The following is an example response. Note that:

• Individual upsert requests aren't guaranteed to be returned in the same order. Each upsert response has the same ID as the corresponding upsert request, so you can use the ID to map individual requests and responses.
• The errors field is returned for any individual requests that fail.

{
  "values": {
    "id2": {
      "merchant_id": "7WQ0KXC8ZSD90",
      "custom_attribute": {
        "key": "charity",
        "version": 2,
        "updated_at": "2023-05-30T00:16:23Z",
        "value": false,
        "created_at": "2023-05-20T20:20:35Z",
        "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
      }
    },
    "id1": {
      "merchant_id": "7WQ0KXC8ZSD90",
      "custom_attribute": {
        "key": "business-owner",
        "version": 3,
        "updated_at": "2023-05-30T00:16:23Z",
        "value": "Michael Francis",
        "created_at": "2023-01-01T00:16:23Z",
        "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
      }
    },
    "id3": {
      "errors": [
        {
          "code": "CONFLICT",
          "detail": "Attempting to write to version 3, but current version is 4",
          "field": "version",
          "category": "INVALID_REQUEST_ERROR"
        }
      ]
    },
    "id4": {
      "merchant_id": "HF0HKANA3R9FP8",
      "custom_attribute": {
        "key": "square:a0f1505a-2aa1-490d-91a8-8d31ff181808",
        "version": 2,
        "updated_at": "2023-05-30T00:16:23Z",
        "value": "[email protected]",
        "created_at": "2022-11-08T23:14:47Z",
        "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
      }
    }
  }
}

After each custom attribute is upserted, Square invokes the merchant.custom_attribute.owned.updated and merchant.custom_attribute.visible.updated webhooks.

To list the custom attributes that are set for a merchant, call ListMerchantCustomAttributes and provide the merchant_id in the request path. The following parameters are optional:

• with_definitions - Indicates whether to return the custom attribute definition in the definition field of each custom attribute. Set this parameter to true to get the name and description of each custom attribute, information about the data type, or other definition details. The default value is false.
• limit - Specifies a maximum page size of 100 results. The default limit is 20 results. If the results are paged, the cursor field in the response contains a value that you can send with the cursor query parameter to retrieve the next page of results.

The following example request includes the limit query parameter:

When all pages are retrieved, the results include:

• All custom attributes owned by the requesting application that have a value. The key for these custom attributes is the key value that was provided for the definition.
• All custom attributes owned by other applications that have a value and a visibility setting of VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY or VISIBILITY_WRITE_VALUES.

A custom attribute is owned by the application that created the corresponding definition.

The following is an example response:

{
 "custom_attributes": [
        {
         "key": "business-owner",
         "version": 2,
    		 "updated_at": "2023-02-02T04:17:09Z", 
         "value": "Christine Lee",
     		"created_at": "2023-01-20T02:41:37Z",
    		"visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY"
        },
{
        "key": "charity",
     		"version": 1,
   		  "updated_at": "2023-01-20T02:41:37Z",
    		"value": false,
    		"created_at": "2023-01-20T02:41:37Z",
    		"visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
        },
 {
        "key": "employees",
        "version": 1,
        "updated_at": "2022-12-02T19:51:29.235Z",
        "value": 10,
        "created_at": "2022-12-02T19:51:29.235Z",
        "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
        },
        {
         "key": "diversity-label",
         "version": 1,
         "updated_at": "2022-12-06T15:57:23.211Z",
         "value": ["610fa590-70cd-4ec9-b64c-1dad6ba3c8f9"
               	],
         "created_at": "2022-12-06T15:57:23.211Z",
         "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY"
        }
    ]
}

To see the custom attribute definitions along with the custom attributes, set the with_definitions query parameter to true:

The following is an excerpt of an example response showing the custom attribute definition in the definition field:

{
 "key": "charity",
  "version": 1,
  "definition": {
    			"key": "charity",
  		  	    "name": "Charitable Organization",
                "description": "Is this merchant a charitable organization with 501(c)(3) status?",
    			"version": 1,
    			"updated_at": "2023-01-20T02:41:37Z",
    			"schema": {
      				"$ref": "https://developer-production-s.squarecdn.com/schemas/v1/common.json#squareup.common.Boolean"
   		 	      },
    			"created_at": "2023-01-20T02:41:37Z",
    			"visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
  		}
  "updated_at": "2023-01-20T02:41:37Z",
  "value": false,
  "created_at": "2023-01-20T02:41:37Z",
  "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES"
        }
    ...

If no custom attributes are found, Square returns an empty object.

{}

To retrieve a custom attribute from a merchant, call RetrieveMerchantCustomAttribute and provide the merchant_id in the request path, along with the key of the custom attribute to retrieve.

The following parameters are optional:

• with_definition - Indicates whether to return the custom attribute definition in the definition field of the custom attribute. Set this parameter to true to get the name and description of the custom attribute, information about the data type, or other definition details. The default value is false.
• version - The current version of the custom attribute, used for strongly consistent reads to guarantee that you receive the most up-to-date data. When included in the request, Square returns the specified version or a later version if one exists. If the specified version is later than the current version, Square returns a 400 BAD_REQUEST error.

The following is an example request:

The response shows an Address-type custom attribute. The value field contains the value of the custom attribute.

{
  "custom_attribute": {
    "key": "businessAddress",
    "version": 1,
    "updated_at": "2022-05-26T17:08:57Z",
    "value": {
      "address_line_1": "333 2nd St",
      "locality": "San Francisco",
      "administrative_district_level_1": "California",
      "postal_code": "94107",
      "country": "US"
    },
    "created_at": "2022-05-26T17:08:57Z",
    "visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY"
  }
}

To see the custom attribute definitions along with the custom attributes, set the with_definition query parameter to true:

The response shows the custom attribute definition in the definition field. This example defines a Selection-type custom attribute. The mapping information in the schema.items field is used to determine the custom attribute value.

The names field contains the named options and the enum field contains the corresponding Square-assigned UUIDs. The named options map by index to the UUIDs. The first option maps to the first UUID, the second option maps to the second UUID, and so on. Therefore, the UUID in the value field of this custom attribute maps to the "Reupholstery" option.

 { 
   "custom_attribute": {
	 "key": "diversity-label", 
    "version": 2, 
    "definition": {
             "key": "diversity-label",
             "name": "Diversity label",
             "description": "The self-reported diversity label(s) for the business",
            "version": 2,
            "updated_at": "2023-01-09T15:57:23.211Z",
            "schema": {
                "$schema": "https://developer-production-s.squarecdn.com/meta-schemas/v1/selection.json",
                "maxItems": 8.0,
                "type": "array",
                "uniqueItems": true,
                "items": {
                     "names": [
                        "Woman-owned",
                        "Black-owned",
                        "Asian-owned",
                        "Indigenous-owned",
                        "LGBTQ+ owned",
                        "Veteran-owned",
                        "Latin-owned",
                        "Pacific Islander-owned"
                    ],
                    "enum": [
                        "46efa55a-1f1d-467f-9733-468f881a4f20",
                        "954998e1-b666-43a4-baf3-89cb87afe25a",
                        "610fa590-70cd-4ec9-b64c-1dad6ba3c8f9",
                        "92ds8kzp-44tz-38d7-vjsg-rj35apkvg5vt",
                        "2jrxqv8l-9pcn-adfg-g35u-65yi30ref2od",
                        "b2f3cfed-c884-4621-9a16-c24932480c24",
          ]
                }
            },
            "created_at": "2022-12-06T15:57:23.211Z",
        	"visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY"
        },
"updated_at": "2023-01-09T15:57:23.211Z",
	"Value": [
"610fa590-70cd-4ec9-b64c-1dad6ba3c8f9"
],
"created_at": "2022-12-06T15:57:23.211Z",
"visibility": "VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY"
 }
}

If the custom attribute isn't set for the specified merchant, Square returns the following response:

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "code": "NOT_FOUND",
      "detail": "The requested Value `{key}` is not found",
      "category": "INVALID_REQUEST_ERROR"
    }
  ]
}

If the custom attribute isn't available for the merchant, Square returns the following response:

{
  "errors": [ 
    {
      "code": "BAD_REQUEST",
      "detail": "No matching definition found for value",
      "field": "key",
      "category": "INVALID_REQUEST_ERROR"
    }
  ]
}

To delete a custom attribute from a merchant, call DeleteMerchantCustomAttribute and provide the merchant_id in the request path, along with the key of the custom attribute to delete. If the requesting application isn't the definition owner, the visibility value of the definition must be VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY or VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES.

If successful, Square returns an empty object.

{}

To delete all custom attributes for a merchant in a single request, call the BulkDeleteMerchantCustomAttributes endpoint.

After a custom attribute definition is deleted, Square invokes the merchant.custom_attribute.owned.deleted and merchant.custom_attribute.visible.deleted webhooks.