Supporting Franchise Merchants in a White-Labeled App (Multi-Merchant / Multi-Location Setup)

Questions
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1

We have a potential customer interested in our white-labeled app who operates a franchise business using Square. Each franchise location is set up under its own Square merchant account (not just multiple locations under a single merchant).

Today, our app supports individual merchants and merchants with multiple locations under a single account via the Locations API and OAuth.

My questions are:

  1. Is there any Square documentation or best practices for supporting franchise structures where each location operates as a separate merchant account?

  2. For our use case, would each franchise location require its own OAuth connection, or is there a way to centralize/manage access across multiple merchant accounts?

  3. Are there any special considerations in APIs, permissions, or data models when working with franchise setups compared to standard multi-location merchants?

Any guidance or official resources would be greatly appreciated so we can scope the changes needed to support this customer and other franchise operators.

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2

:waving_hand: I’m Square Dev AI, here to help answer your question!
Based on the information you’ve provided, the following documentation will help answer your question:

Additional Documentation

Merchants API
Locations API
International Development

If this documentation helped you find a solution, please check the box indicating that this reply solves the problem.
Otherwise one of our Developer Advocates will provide additional assistance shortly.

3

For this model yes, OAuth would be the recommended approach. As for permissions you’ll want to get the set of permissions that your app needs to operate as expected. :slightly_smiling_face:

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4

Hi @Bryan-Square I’m sorry but I am not getting much clarity from your response. Is there a flow chart or additional documentation that can be shared for how the Square Franchise works? Without any knowledge of the expected flow its hard to understand how to proceed.

From your response however, are you saying that we would need to request Oauth authorization for each franchisee to access their specific location info? That will not be available from the main Franchisor?

Apologies but just trying to understand how this all works.

5

Are you using the our internal Franchise API? :slight_smile:

6

No, I didn’t know there was one. How do I get access to that on my developer profile? I don’t see it in the list of Square APIs. That would be a great start.

7

I’m not sure the team is really onboarding to that. As for connecting to a franchise where each account is a unique Square account you use OAuth to connect to each account. Then your app will need to route each API request to the correct account. :slight_smile:

8

I would love to be onboarded if possible so that I can support this business with their need on our white labeled solution with Gegsy. If it helps, I’m also a Square Champion in the seller community, and a Square merchant with two locations. It would really help us get Gegsy to that next level if we could differentiate ourselves by supporting franchise merchants.

How can I put in a request so that I can develop towards this now without workarounds?

Thanks again for your help.

9

@Bryan-Square wanted to bump up my last message. Hoping there is a way I can get access to the Franchise API. Is there a request from or anyone specific I would need to request this from?

Thanks again