Hey Ben, thanks for popping by, it was a combination of your posts and examining the code in the test node server that helped me pinpoint the issues with connecting to the php side of things, there needs to be a complete php example in one place as this is what square documentation is lacking, updates to the code were made whch broke the links between the two client and server files.
If anyone needs a working example just drop me a message and I will pop one over to you.
I have already sent a copy over to two people today to help out 
@Square, with regards to your php example, your card-payment.html taken from the test quickstart is almost correct to work with php (apart from the post URL), but the process-payment.php needed much modification.