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Start QuizPayPal Zettle Review
PayPal Zettle offers ease of use, predictable pricing, and mobile POS hardware, making it a great processing choice for smaller merchants who want a simple way to accept payments.
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WRITTEN & RESEARCHED BY
Expert Contributor
Last updated onUpdated
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REVIEWED BY
Expert Contributor
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PayPal Zettle
| Total Rating | 4.4 |
|---|---|
| Pricing4.2 | |
| Ease Of Use5.0 | |
| Features4.3 | |
| Customer Service4.4 | |
| User Reviews3.9 | |
Pricing
No monthly feeContract
NoneEquipment Cost
$29 for your first card readerPayPal Zettle At A Glance
- PayPal Zettle allows PayPal merchants to take payments in person while seamlessly connecting with PayPal’s merchant services ecosystem
- PayPal Zettle offers a card reader, a smart terminal, and the ability to accept in-person payments with Tap to Pay
- PayPal Zettle also lets you accept QR code payments, offers in-app invoicing, syncs with your online store, integrates with QuickBooks Online, and much more
Pros
- Easy-to-use interface
- In-app invoicing available
- Free sub-user accounts
- Competitive flat-rate pricing
- Ideal for lower-volume merchants
Cons
- Account stability issues
- No offline mode
- Inconsistent customer support
- Not suitable for high-risk industries
- Not ideal for higher-volume merchants
Table of Contents
- What Is PayPal Zettle?
- Businesses That Would Benefit From PayPal Zettle
- PayPal Zettle Pricing
- PayPal Zettle Features
- Customer Service & Technical Support
- Ease Of Use
- PayPal Zettle Contract & Commitment
- Concerns About PayPal Zettle
- PayPal Zettle Reviews
- How PayPal Zettle Compares To Other Mobile POS Solutions
- Final Verdict On PayPal Zettle
What Is PayPal Zettle?
PayPal Here is no longer available for new merchants, having been superseded by PayPal Zettle. PayPal recommends that all PayPal Here users migrate to PayPal Zettle.
PayPal Zettle, PayPal’s mobile processing solution, combines a free mobile app with two mobile card reader options and several ready-made Store Kits complete with receipt printers, iPad stands, and other accessories. Zettle allows small businesses to accept PayPal in-store, though it also integrates with PayPal’s online payment processing services.
PayPal Zettle offers well-designed and up-to-date card readers, an intuitive, capable app backed by the PayPal name, and a wide array of merchant services. PayPal is not without its drawbacks, though — its customer service is inconsistent, and it has less stability than you’d get with a dedicated merchant account.
Businesses That Would Benefit From PayPal Zettle
A wide variety of small, low-risk businesses stand to benefit from using PayPal Zettle to take payments and service customers, especially those that need same-day merchant account approval to get up and selling quickly.
While large, high-volume businesses will pay less for processing with a POS that connects to a dedicated merchant account with interchange-plus pricing, PayPal’s flat rates for in-person payment processing are actually lower than those of competitors like Square, making Zettle a solid choice for lower-volume merchants.
Occasional sellers who sell items at fairs or markets may find an easy mobile solution like PayPal Zettle particularly appealing, with its convenient card reader that fits easily in your hand and its competitive processing rates.
PayPal Zettle Pricing
| Pricing4.2 |
|---|
| Hardware 4.3 |
| Payment Processsing 4.0 |
Because PayPal Zettle offers low POS processing rates and doesn’t charge hidden fees, the company has earned an excellent score in this category. Here is what you can expect to pay when using PayPal Zettle:
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Pricing Starts At | $0/month |
| Account Setup Fee | $0 |
| Contract Length | Month-to-month |
| Processing Model | Flat-rate |
| Card-present Transaction Fee | 2.29% + $0.09 (including QR code transactions) |
| eCommerce Transaction Fee | 3.49% + $0.49 for invoices paid with PayPal; 2.99% + $0.49 for invoices paid via credit card |
| Keyed-in Transaction Fee | 3.49% + $0.09 |
| Equipment Cost | $29+ |
| PayPal Zettle Plans | Price | When To Use |
|---|---|---|
| Free Plan | $0/month | If you have basic retail or restaurant POS needs |
High-volume merchants may be able to negotiate better rates — contact PayPal for a custom pricing plan.
With PayPal Zettle, you won’t pay any:
- Monthly/annual fees
- PCI compliance fees
- Setup fees
- Monthly equipment fees
Note that if you process a lot of American Express transactions, you could potentially save money with PayPal because of its flat-rate pricing. You’ll pay less for Amex transactions with PayPal, but you might pay a little bit more for some kinds of Visa and Mastercard transactions than you would with a full merchant account.
PayPal Zettle’s in-person transaction rates are more competitive than PayPal’s online transaction rates, making PayPal a good choice for merchants who have an online presence but do the bulk of their sales in person. To learn more about pricing for credit card processing and how PayPal Zettle fees compare to other options, check out our guide to credit card processing rates and fees.
Extra PayPal Zettle Costs & Fees
| PayPal Zettle Extra Costs | Price |
|---|---|
| Zettle Reader 2 | $29 for first reader ($58 with charging dock) |
| Additional Zettle Readers | $79 each |
| Zettle Terminal | $199 ($239 with built-in barcode scanner) |
| POS Store Kits | $249-$699 |
| Chargeback Fee | $20 |
Note that the above pricing pertains to US merchants only. For UK pricing, see our Zettle By PayPal (UK Version) review.
PayPal Zettle Features
| Features4.3 |
|---|
| Device Hardware Features 5.0 |
| Device Software Features 3.5 |
PayPal Zettle makes for quite an attractive mobile POS package. It’s easy to get started, and if you use PayPal for anything else, your information gets consolidated in one place. And along with the mobile card reader, you’ll get the option to have a full countertop register.
Zettle includes numerous features and integrations. It’s not as fully featured as Square, but most retail and restaurant businesses with basic needs will find everything they need in the app, including multichannel selling options.
With that being said, I’d like to see PayPal add an offline mode. This would let you securely add all of your customer’s credit card information into the app without an internet connection. Whether you’re offline temporarily due to an outage or you’re offsite, you shouldn’t have to stop business due to a bad connection. While a Zettle reader can be a very handy tool for taking payments at farmer’s markets and conventions, wifi at such events can be spotty at best.
Features Overview
| PayPal Zettle Features | Availability |
|---|---|
| Multi-Store Support | |
| Contactless Payments | |
| Multi-Channel Selling | |
| Gift Cards | |
| Customer Loyalty | |
| Marketing Tools | |
| Online Ordering | |
| Inventory Management | |
| Reporting | |
| Menu Management | |
| Delivery Management | |
| EBT Acceptance | |
| Employee Management | |
| Text Messaging |
PayPal Zettle Features In Detail
Let’s look at some Paypal Zettle features in detail.
PayPal Zettle App Features
- PayPal & Venmo QR Codes: As offering contactless payment options become ever more important, Zettle enables you to accept both PayPal and Venmo QR code payments. Just have your customer scan your QR code using their phone.
- Manual Card Entry: Need to accept payment over the phone quickly? Just enter the customer’s card information into the app and the amount to be charged. The transaction is recorded, but no items are added to your sales reports.
- Cash Payments: With the ability to log cash payments, you’ll be able to manage more of your payments in one place. Sadly, the app doesn’t currently allow you to log check payments the way PayPal Here did. However, you can still accept checks using the regular PayPal app if you have a PayPal Balance account.
- Item Library: PayPal Zettle lets you build an inventory of products through the dashboard or within the app. Add product images and prices (both the cost price and selling price), sort your products into categories, add up to three item variants for each item, manually adjust your tax rates, enable inventory tracking, bulk import products from a spreadsheet, and more. Stock levels will now update automatically, a feature PayPal Here lacked.
- Reports: View sales reports, customize time periods, and export Excel files and PDFs from my.zettle.com. You can access your sales reports by time, specific products, and each employee. You can also see a table that shows your ten best-selling products for the selected day, week, or month.
- Discounts: PayPal Zettle supports the option to add discounts at checkout if you’re having a sale.
- Custom Gift Cards: With Zettle, you can offer gift cards to your customers, either in physical form or via email.
- Tap To Pay: With the rollout of this new feature, you can accept contactless payments with just the Zettle app and your smartphone. Learn more about Tap to Pay for merchants.
- Support For Register Setup: You can build an entire register setup with Zettle, with support for cash drawers, tablet stands, receipt printers, and barcode scanners. I’ll give you some examples of what you can get in an upcoming section.
- Refunds & Partial Refunds: You can issue full and partial refunds from the Zettle app and the online dashboard.
Card Readers
With PayPal Zettle, you can choose between two different card-reading devices.
PayPal Zettle Reader 2
PayPal’s Zettle Reader 2 is a Bluetooth-enabled contactless + chip + PIN card reader that requires an internet connection. It connects to all Apple (iOS 10+ required) and Android (Android 5+ required) smartphones and tablets. Along with credit and debit cards, the Zettle Reader accepts Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay contactless payments.
PayPal states that its battery should last about eight hours or 100 transactions and that it takes one to two hours to charge via USB cable, but if you don’t want to worry about charging, you can order the Zettle 2 Dock to ensure that your reader stays charged throughout your sales day. The reader also supports register setups with tablet stands, receipt printers, and barcode scanners.
Zettle Terminal
PayPal’s newly introduced Zettle Terminal is an all-in-one device — it sports a touchscreen and does not need to be paired with your smartphone or tablet, as it runs the POS app natively. The terminal comes with an activated SIM card. The cost of the terminal covers mobile data usage.
You can get the terminal for by itself or a version with a built-in barcode scanner. You can also get it packaged with a receipt printer and dock for an additional fee.
PayPal Zettle POS Systems
If it’s a full POS system you want, Zettle offers four different options (referred to as Store Kits). Each Kit comes with a Zettle Reader and can include (depending on the Kit you get) a dock, an iPad stand, a Smart Printer, thermal rolls for the printer, and a barcode scanner. Each of these accessories is available separately as well, along with a cash drawer. See Zettle’s website for details and pricing.
Customer Service & Technical Support
| Customer Service4.4 |
|---|
| Personal Support 3.8 |
| Self-Service 5.0 |
With PayPal Zettle, you’ll be using PayPal’s main support system. PayPal has several different customer service/support options, including a community forum and online help center. However, phone support is not great.
Customer Support Channels
| PayPal Zettle Customer Service | Availability |
|---|---|
| Phone Support | |
| Email Support | |
| Support Tickets | |
| Live Chat | |
| Dedicated Support Representative | |
| Knowledge Base or Help Center | |
| Videos & Tutorials | |
| Company Blog | |
| Social Media |
PayPal Zettle’s customer support offerings include the following:
- Community Forum: The PayPal Community has over 5 million members with over 2 million posts and over a thousand people online at any time. You can ask any question and likely get a quick response. However, keep in mind that PayPal doesn’t guarantee the answers here. You’ll find a dedicated spot for business owners called the PayPal Merchant Community, with subsections on merchant products and services, business tools, reporting, managing risk and fraud, and more. It also features a searchable knowledgebase.
- Help Center: You can search and find answers for issues, including password and account access, account setup, payments-specific matters, such as holds and declines, as well as other how-tos.
- Phone/Email: Sadly, PayPal’s phone support is notoriously inconsistent. If you have an account-related issue, you’ll have to call. For most other questions, concerns, or problems, you can find help through one of PayPal’s other support channels. To be fair, while my experience involved a considerable wait for a callback, the help I received was reasonable.
- Social Media: Besides the primary Twitter account and Facebook, there’s a support Twitter account where PayPal will field your service and support questions.
The biggest mark against PayPal is the customer service via phone — numerous users have had a poorer phone experience than my own. When you need help, you probably don’t have time to worry about inconsistent phone service.
Ease Of Use
| Ease Of Use5.0 |
|---|
| Initial Setup 5.0 |
| Device Use 5.0 |
I can say from my experience with the PayPal Zettle app that it is intuitive and easy for non-techies to operate successfully. Functions are easy to access, and nothing threw me for a loop.
While there’s nothing particularly new or innovative about the PayPal Zettle app itself, its well-designed, easy-to-navigate features fit the bill for almost any need you’d encounter on the go. As a bonus, most of the features are also easily managed right from within the app, making it a truly mobile option. Plus, connecting to your POS device and peripheral hardware is a cinch.
PayPal Zettle Contract & Commitment
PayPal is a third-party payment processor, which means it aggregates accounts instead of creating individual merchant accounts for each business. This model makes signing up more accessible since approval is also a simpler process with fewer hoops to jump through. Most merchants can sign up and start processing on the same day. As far as additional fees, you won’t face any added monthly costs or early termination fees with PayPal Zettle.
If you already have a PayPal business account, it’s fairly easy to start using PayPal Zettle — though you’re not automatically guaranteed access. You’ll have to apply and wait for approval.
While you won’t need to sign a three-year contract, you will be signing a contract, so take the time to understand what you’re signing. All in all, we’re happy to give PayPal an excellent rating in this category because of the freedom it gives you to change your mind or scale when needed.
Concerns About PayPal Zettle
As a POS, PayPal Zettle, beyond the aforementioned lack of an offline mode and lacklluster phone support, there really isn’t much to warrant concern. The card reader and touchscreen terminal are both capable and reasonably priced devices for taking payments, and the POS software is solid and versatile.
The real concern regarding PayPal Zettle is on the payment processing side of things; in particular, it’s the frequency with which users experience withheld funds and account freezes/terminations.
As a third-party processor, PayPal aggregates all its merchants into one single merchant account, which means there’s an inherent amount of account instability. You can get set up almost right away, but PayPal analyzes your individual transactions that much more closely to make sure you’re not conducting prohibited business activities or processing fraudulent transactions.
Upticks in processing volume — common for seasonal merchants — may also trigger an account review, followed by a hold/reserve, a freeze, or even an account termination. However, that’s the risk of using an aggregator; you’ll find these issues with Square and Stripe as well. I should note that a majority of PayPal business users experience no such issues.
PayPal Zettle Reviews
| User Reviews3.9 |
|---|
| Customer Feedback 4.0 |
| Review Site Aggregate 3.8 |
PayPal Zettle-specific reviews can be hard to find amidst the avalanche of PayPal reviews posted by both consumers and merchants. However, PayPal Zettle currently gets an average rating of 3.0 out of 5 at the Apple store based on 871 ratings and an average rating of 3.5 out of 5 at the Google Play store based on over 43,000 reviews.
Generally, merchants seem to like the Zettle app itself, though a lot of Zettle users have complaints about PayPal’s credit card processing.
How PayPal Zettle Compares To Other Mobile POS Solutions
PayPal Zettle is a strong contender in the mobile POS and processing fields, but how does it stack up against its competitors? We decided to compare PayPal Zettle to two competitors whose products are targeted to a similar audience in the mobile processing/mPOS space: Square and Helcim.
Final Verdict On PayPal Zettle
| PayPal Zettle Review Summary | |
|---|---|
| Pricing Range | $0/month |
| Choose If You Need |
|
PayPal Zettle has everything most new and mid-sized businesses need to take payments, whether on the go or as part of a full retail setup. We can wholeheartedly recommend PayPal Zettle to anyone interested in standalone, pay-as-you-go processing. PayPal Zettle gets a robust a strong score for its ease of use, great hardware, transparency, and overall dependability. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s among the top mPOS apps on the market today.
If you already have an online store or want to start one, PayPal has a lot to offer in this area. Check out our full PayPal review for a thorough rundown of the company’s online credit card processing and the other myriad tools in PayPal’s payments arsenal.
Before making a final decision, however, check out some of your other options to compare features and decide what’s best for your particular business type. If you prefer to avoid PayPal, look at the top PayPal alternatives for businesses.
Content Featuring PayPal Zettle
POS Hardware & Mobile Credit Card Reader Rating Methodology
We spend hours researching and evaluating each POS hardware and mobile payments device that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on key characteristics to generate our product ratings.
When rating POS hardware (which might include registers, mobile card readers, and other similar devices), we use a 38-point rubric that looks at pricing, ease of use, features, customer service, and user reviews. We weigh each section differently to calculate the total star rating.
- Pricing: 40% of the total star rating
- Ease of Use: 20% of the total star rating
- Features: 25% of the total star rating
- Customer Service: 10% of the total star rating
- User Reviews: 5% of the total star rating
Each section is further broken down into granular, weighted subsections, in which we look at specific attributes, like whether reduced fees are available for multiple terminals, which payment processing options are available, and how well the hardware integrates with POS or payment processing software apps. We’re also paying careful attention to hardware’s relative cost, any associated fees, and whether financing is available, among other things.
Learn more about how we rate POS hardware.
Jason Vissers
Expert Contributor at Merchant Maverick
Jason has been writing about small business software platforms, services, and financing since 2015. Jason’s expertise has been featured in Yahoo Finance, Time/NextAdvisor, Home Business Magazine, CreditCards.com, GoBankingRates, TheLadders.com, and other publications. He has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from San Diego State University.
View Jason Vissers's professional experience on LinkedIn.
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The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆
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PayPal Zettle
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After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see PayPal Zettle for yourself.
The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆
|
PayPal Zettle
|
|---|
After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see PayPal Zettle for yourself.
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