API for creating a new App?

I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this question, but I want to at least ask. Is there a way to create a new App thru the APIs?

No, that currently does not exist, but I am curious what your use-case is, if you don’t mind sharing?

No, not at all. We are building an app that integrates with square and two other modern POS systems. Creating the app thru the API would keep the user from having to go into square to configure the app. It’s not a super-big deal, but it would allow us to remove that tiny bit of friction in our onboarding process.

Got it, I was thinking of that possibility, although if you used Square’s OAuth API, they wouldn’t need to create their own application (unless I’m misunderstanding). The OAuth API would allow the merchant to give your application access to their account based on a set of permissions, then your app can generate a unique access token that you can use to make requests on their behalf.

I think of OAuth as a web thing. Does it work in Mobile?

The initial authorization would need to be done in a browser, but after that all of it can be handled by backend services (refreshing the OAuth tokens, etc). The first step basically asks if they accept giving your application access to their account. If they say yes, you’ll be able to use the response to generate a unique access token that is only for that particular merchant account moving forward. You would need to be mindful to refresh it before every 30 days, but that can be done via the server-side, nothing needs to be done on the browser again unless they revoke your app and want to re-add it for whatever reason.