Etsy Credit Card Reader

Etsy News Blog: “Today, Etsy launches a solution for our sellers based in the US to accept credit and debit card payments in person and help manage their multi-channel sales more efficiently.”

My dear wife has a store on Etsy for her little crafting business, Ragamuffin Design. She’s been using Square at craft shows and has been evaluating other store solutions that offer tighter integration with her domain, but the introduction of this card reader connected to Etsy’s service to manage inventory and collect payments is hard to ignore.

At a recent craft show Kim used this new reader and the Etsy application to great effect. I’d say it’s a winner and may be a good option for others running small businesses. I didn’t get a chance to use the app or accept payments with it, but I would change one small thing in the iOS Application. I would allow it to rotate upside down. On an iPhone 5 the app is upside down if you want the card reader at the top.

I do find it interesting Square hasn’t created an SDK for others to hook into. With the advent of Apple Pay I would hope they’d open up a bit. Access to credit and debit cards is still necessary for little businesses like my wife’s crafting business. Collecting cash isn’t the only thing she needs to do. She also needs to manage inventory on her site.

Big Cartel is a small, tight-knit, company that provides a white-label storefront for indie artists, crafters, and whatever else you’d think to sale online. They have a small (500,000) set of very loyal customers that manage their day-to-day online sales using the platform. They also have a really nice iOS client application that is missing one small thing. The ability to support swiping credit cards on the go. They do provide a way to collect money by typing in credit card numbers, it works, but is less convenient and error prone. They could really benefit from a Square SDK. They need this kind of integration because, like Etsy, they can manage your product inventory as the transaction is completed. Doing that after the fact is a real pain, I know, I’ve seen my wife do that after shows, prior to using the Etsy card reader.

I’m also a bit surprised someone like Stripe hasn’t created a white label reader with an SDK. Couple that with an open platform from someone like Big Cartel and you suddenly open possibilities for third party developers to create all kinds of interesting solutions.