Is Square safe to use?

Square integrates 7 third-party SDKs for analytics. It collects data linked to your identity including Financial Info, Location, Contact Info, and Contacts and 5 more categories. It does not include any advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Square need?

Square requests 13 iOS permissions: Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Location (Always), Location (Always & When In Use), Speech Recognition, Face ID, Save to Photo Library, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Peripheral, and Local Network.

How many SDKs does Square have?

Square integrates 7 third-party SDKs. 1 for analytics and 6 for other. None are for advertising or attribution.

Does Square access your location?

Yes. Square requests location access. The developer states: "To protect buyers and sellers, Square requires location information for every payment.".

Does Square access your camera or microphone?

Square requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "Upload your account logo, feature photo, and product images with the photos stored on your mobile device". Microphone access is for "Square Reader uses the microphone connection in your headphone jack to send payment card data to your device". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Square access your contacts?

Yes. Square requests access to your contacts. The developer states: "Square needs access to your contacts in order to import them into your customer list.".

Does Square run in the background?

Yes. Square registers 4 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Square?

Other business apps include Acrobat , ADP Mobile , Google Ads , isolved , Printer App , and Amazon . Each app takes a different approach to business and varies in its data collection and SDK usage.

Business · Privacy report

Square Point of Sale (POS)

Free · ★4.8 · Block, Inc.

Is Square safe?

It collects a lot of your data itself.

Our take. Its own App Store privacy label declares Square links 9 categories of your data to your identity, including financial info, location, contact info and contacts. That collection, more than any outside tracker, is the story here.

Privacy footprint · vs 115 businessHeavy

Trackers from other companies1 · some

typical business: 3

Data the app links to you9 types · a lot

typical business: 5 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Square links 9 categories of your data to you.

From the developer's own App Store privacy label. These are the kinds of data Square ties to your identity.

Financial InfoLocationContact InfoContactsUser ContentIdentifiersUsage DataDiagnosticsOther Data

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 1 company.

Third-party SDKs found in the app, matched to the company that publishes each. Present in the code; we do not observe what they transmit.

🏢Other third partiesanalytics

A third-party SDK.

SDK

How it compares

Where it sits among business.

Every one of these apps we have scanned, on the two measures above: third-party trackers it carries (across) and data it links to you on its own label (up). Toward the top right is more invasive.

Each dot is one busines app. Square sits high on the left: it collects a lot itself but uses few outside trackers.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 7 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 1 are third-party trackers.

1analytics

6standard libraries

1 of the 7 is a third-party tracker. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

Other third partiesanalytics

OneTrust Privacy/Consent

Standard libraries6 · on-device

The app's own code plus open-source interface, storage and networking libraries.

How we know this

Counterspy downloads the app from the App Store and statically analyzes its compiled binary. Embedded SDKs are matched against a signature database and resolved to the company that operates each. We also read the developer's App Store privacy label, which lists the data the app says it collects and links to you. We do not run the app or intercept its traffic, so we report capabilities present in the code and the developer's own disclosures, not proven transmission. We assess privacy and data collection, not malware, security flaws, or developer intent. Reports are automated and never edited for payment. Scan v7.0, 2026-04-01.

Third-party trackers are advertising, analytics and attribution SDKs detected by static signature matching. Presence shows a capability is compiled in, not that it ran or transmitted data.
"Data the app links to you" is the count of data categories the developer declares as Data Linked To You in its App Store privacy label. Labels are self-reported and not verified by Apple.
Comparison across the 115 business in our corpus. Trackers: median 3. Data linked to you: median 5.