Our Experience with Zettle by PayPal

And why you should run away from this company

To start, Onboarding to Zettle was rough.  

They sent us three Card Readers, before one would work ... and then they sent another, which was nice ... 

and then they asked us to recycle the first two DOA units ... 

and then they asked us for them back.  

It was a bit of a mess. 

 

Then they froze our accounts after the first few weeks.  We sell via our store; our website and we travel to events and festivals to vend at those.  Well all that was too much for the poor Zettle (now PayPal) algorithm.  They demanded shipping receipts for the items we sold, directly/physically - to our customers - at our last event.  After some phone queue hell, and multiple conversations with their reps, where we gently explained our business model, it was eventually sorted.

 

They apologized multiple times, and said it would never happen again....  It did.

 

The Zettle App

The app itself isn't too bad.  It's stable about 98% of the time.  Of course, it's embarrassing when the Zettle app freezes when you are taking your customers payment that other 2% of the time, so if you like to avoid these kind of embarrassing situations, look elsewhere.   By comparison, I find the Square app to be stable 100% of the time.

 

The app isn't too complicated/fussy, and doesn't suffer from feature overload, which does give it an advantage over Square.

In addition, Zettle have finally hired a dev with some CSS skills, the app does not look as butt ugly as it used to.  Well done there!

Unfortunately, the app has recently introduced some 'sales comparison blocks', that dominate a chunk of the screen in a bright colorful way.  These 'comparisons' are utterly useless for us, a waste of screen space, and there is no way to turn them off.

In addition, if you want to see your reports for the day, the app ungracefully leaves the main app, to load webpages, that have a different look and feel, and serve a Cookie Consent warning every time.  It's just amateurish.

Also, if you need to know maybe the most essential stat of your day - Net Sales - i.e. Gross Sales, less sales taxes.  Well, good luck finding it, as its buried.  The app seems designed by someone that has never run a business in their life.

 

The Evil

And finally, at 11:30pm on March 15th, after 9 months of using Zettle, we have the latest debacle.  Yet again they have frozen deposits from PayPal to our bank account, due to unusual behavior.  And what pray tell is this unusual behavior?   Well.  We run an Irish store, and in the week running up to ... March 17th ... there has been a spike in sales!!!.   Yes, that's right gentle reader, we are selling more Irish themed goods, in our Irish themed store, in the week before St Patrick's Day!

 

Right before our busiest festival event, on the busiest day of the year, Zettle/PayPal has suspended our ability to accept credit cards.

A catastrophic blow to any business.

 

So. If you get too much sleep at night, then Zettle by PayPal is the app for you.  If your business is making too much money, then Zettle by PayPal is the app for you.  If you love stress, and need more of it, the Zettle by PayPal is the app for you.

But if none of these are true, then....

 

RUN AWAY.  SAVE YOURSELF. DO NOT USE THESE CLOWNS.