Square is a company possibly best known for its credit card reader that attaches to smartphones, enabling small businesses, artisans and artists to transact in ways that had been only reserved for established business in the past. This product helped create a vibrant ecosystem of small businesses that would have never existed without the ability to tap into the modern payment system in an accessible way. Square has since launched a suite of business tools that create the scaffolding for any modern small business to succeed, like a website builder, estimates, invoicing, and banking. Recently, Square has launched the ability for its merchants to tap into Uber and DoorDash’s delivery network.

As explained on Square’s company blog, “Square has made delivering orders locally simple and easy for your business. With Square Online and On-Demand Delivery, a courier from a reliable local delivery service provider (e.g. Uber/Postmates, DoorDash) will be dispatched automatically to your business location to fulfill the local delivery. Customers can sign up for text alerts, which link to a live map for real-time order tracking.

With On-Demand Delivery, you won't have to pay commissions; just a flat fee of $1.50 per order. You can choose to cover the fee, pass the local delivery costs on to your customers, or cover local delivery for orders over a certain amount (e.g. free delivery for orders over $50).”

If you’re a small food business, you can use this new functionality to deliver meals right from your home kitchen. Effectively this means that your home cooking business can operate much in the way as someone ordering delivery from their favorite national franchise restaurant. If you’re a local retail boutique, you can now offer same day delivery to your customers at the tap of a button.

This means that as a small business, you can utilize the delivery networks that big box stores use, yourself. Square makes it simple to add this functionality to your online store, and even easier for your customers to get your goods delivered in a matter of minutes. In the era of Amazon one hour delivery, curbside pickup, or being able to order retail goods from delivery apps, Square has evened the playing ground a bit. Given your delivery radius, you can potentially even deliver goods faster than even the fastest Amazon delivery, and much faster than you would have been able to via traditional shipping methods. The great thing about all of this is that all you have to do is turn the feature on from your Square dashboard, and you’re in business.