PayPal Zettle Review (2024): Features, Pricing & More (2024)

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• Zettle at a Glance
• Other Benefits
• Fine Print
• How Zettle Stacks Up
• Is Zettle Right for You or Your Business?
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Zettle is part of the integrated PayPal family of payment services and is the much-anticipated improvement to the bare-bones PayPal Here card reader app, which will be actually be discontinued Sept. 30, 2023. The Zettle app works on Apple and Android devices and delivers a robust set of POS features for managing products, inventory, customers, payments, sales and staff. You can also create and send invoices, track gift cards and run detailed sales reports using the app, plus access all data in Zettle’s online dashboard.

Accepting in-person card and contactless payments is a snap with Zettle’s user-friendly devices. You can use just a mobile card reader, pair a reader with a countertop stand or build an in-store checkout with a tablet stand, cash drawer, barcode scanner and receipt printer. Whichever you choose, in-person card and contactless payments all have a flat-rate fee of 2.29% plus $0.09.

You can also process keyed-in payments using the app and Zettle online dashboard. However, keyed-in payments have a higher processing fee of 3.49% plus $0.09 per sale.

With Zettle, you also enjoy the convenience of managing all of your payments in one place. If you use PayPal to accept payments in an e-commerce store or use PayPal invoices or payment links, your Zettle payments will appear alongside others in your PayPal account. As with most PayPal payments, Zettle deposits are typically accessible within one business day.

Pricing

PayPal Zettle provides a very economical payment solution for all types of small businesses. Other than one-time costs for a card reader or checkout stand equipment, your only ongoing costs are simple, flat-rate payment processing fees.

• Card reader payments: 2.29% of the sale amount + $0.09 transaction fee
• Manually keyed-in payments: 3.49% of the sale amount + $0.09 transaction fee

Card reader payments are in-person payments when you physically capture card data when the card is swiped, read by a chip reader or paid using e-wallets such as Apple Pay or Google Pay. These processing fees are lower than manually keyed-in payments since the card or e-wallet is present for the sale. Manually keyed-in payments are useful for situations such as phone sales but can carry higher risks, thus the higher fee.

• Zettle mobile card reader: One for $29 with account sign-up, additional readers $79
• Zettle reader stand: $49, card reader not included
• Portable receipt printer: $269
• Checkout stand for iPad: $159, does not include iPad
• Checkout register bundles: $249 to $699, does not include iPad

Here’s what you get for free with PayPal Zettle:

• Free Zettle and PayPal accounts. No startup, monthly or termination fees and no contracts, cancel anytime
• Free Zettle POS. Full-featured POS app takes just minutes to download and set up on your mobile device
• Free Zettle dashboard and virtual terminal. Access your Zettle POS data from your computer, plus accept payments via virtual terminal or connected card reader
• Free next-day deposits. Funds are typically available within one business day with no extra fee

Features

Zettle’s POS app gives users a solid set of features that make selling and collecting payments quick and easy. Here’s a snapshot of what you can do with Zettle in your day-to-day operations.

• Payment options: Accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, PayPal, Venmo and more, plus record cash and check sales.
• Product data: Enter product data, including photos, descriptions and barcodes, and sort products into lists or groups for easy management.
• Inventory tracking: Enter and update inventory numbers and set restock alerts.
• Customer tracking: Record customer data, including name, phone and email.
• Staff tracking: Add multiple staff accounts for productivity tracking.
• Seamless checkout: Quick-search items to ring up, apply set or custom discounts and offer digital or print receipts.
• Refunds: Impress customers with quick sale data retrieval and accurate refunds.
• Gift cards: Sell digital and physical gift cards and track balances.
• Track invoices: Create and send invoices for services, collect online payments and track unpaid invoices.
• Sales reports: Track sales data by date, payment type, product or product group, customer and employee, plus get a quick report on bestsellers.

Zettle integrates with several top e-commerce solutions, external POS systems and accounting packages. These seamless integrations make it easy to expand into e-commerce sales with Zettle as your hub, add a powered-by-PayPal card reader to your existing POS system and streamline accounting tasks.

• E-commerce integrations. You can connect Zettle to Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce to sync product data and inventory.
• POS integrations. Zettle’s PayPal card reader connects to Lightspeed, Loyverse, Revel and Vend by Lightspeed.
• Accounting integrations. Zettle can automate sales data updates in QuickBooks and Xero accounting software to simplify your accounting processes and help minimize errors.

Zettle’s POS toolkit is a perfect fit for many small businesses, but a few elements you get with PayPal competitors such as Square and Shopify are missing. There are currently no extensions or add-ons that bring these features into Zettle’s POS or dashboard tools, free or otherwise.

• Appointments: Zettle doesn’t support built-in appointment sales and tracking or online bookings.
• Loyalty: No loyalty awards tracking via card or app, and loyalty messaging isn’t available.
• Marketing: You can’t create and send marketing campaigns via email or SMS messaging to customers from within Zettle.

If these features are key to your business, you can get the job done using an outside service or app. However, that adds another layer of platform management and costs to your operation.

Another feature miss with Zettle is that it doesn’t support off-line sales. You must have a good cellular or Wi-Fi connection to accept card or contactless payments using the Zettle app and card reader. Sellers in remote locations may have better luck with Square, which has a POS system that’s more robust than Zettle, plus can accept card payments in off-line mode.

Zettle’s core POS product data, sales, customer and staff tracking features compare well with other payment and POS systems. However, the competition tends to offer more built-in features, such as appointments and marketing tools, plus many more expansion opportunities through seamlessly integrated add-ons and apps.

Adding robust e-commerce, loyalty, appointment and marketing features to Zettle requires integration with third-party platforms. Putting this all together takes time and usually adds to your monthly costs. If you need these types of sales tools now or down the road, a Zettle competitor might be the simpler and more economical choice.

If you already use PayPal to handle payments for an online store or for invoicing, subscriptions or person-to-person payments, Zettle is the natural choice to start accepting in-person payments. Or, if you use PayPal Here and can benefit from a full-featured mobile POS, Zettle is certain to impress.

Zettle is also a good choice if you want to take advantage of slightly lower in-person processing fees. With no monthly fees and just 2.29% plus $0.09 per in-person transaction, Zettle has the lowest card processing rate of its close competitors. You don’t get as many built-in features as Square and Shopify. However, if you don’t need added POS bells and whistles, Zettle’s lower rates can save you money in the long run.