Square, the mobile payment startup, has plans to help small businesses with an online scheduling feature announced Monday.
Dubbed “Square Appointments,” the booking service illustrates the company’s desire to continue diversifying its offerings past mobile payments.
In beta mode to pilot testers over the last few months, the service is now available to business owners through its web-based Square dashboard. Interestingly, the new booking service will be available as a standalone service, and won’t require businesses to subscribe to Square’s payment plan.
The appointment-scheduler is optimized for mobile devices and allows customers to book appointments on the web, sending out reminder emails via text messages and email.
The new feature is expected to aid small businesses by halting loss of sales due to “no-shows” and cutting down on time wasted when “trying to book customers on the phone,” according to Square in its post announcing the new feature. It comes with a $30 a month price for individual sellers, $50 for businesses with two to five employees and $90 for anything larger.
Square, which was founded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter, said that of 200 business owners surveyed, 144 sellers said they earned additional revenue, 124 saved over 30 minutes a day and 108 said they’ve earned 10% more appointments per week because of the service.
The feature, however, begins with a slew of other competitors already in the market, including Groupon Scheduler and Schedulicity, among others.
Last week, the company acquired startup Caviar, a “premium delivery” food service, which goes to the show the company is continuing to aggressively expand its offerings.
