Square cards readers are not transferable

By Aleksander Demko, October, 2025.

This is just an public service announcement that Square Card Readers are not transferable between organizations. What this means is:

• Don't buy too many of them thinking you might be able to reuse/gift/sell them to organizations
• Don't buy used ones, as they'll be unusable
• They're basically e-waste after your organization is done with them

If you try to reuse one in another organization you'll get an "Account Ineligible" "Please contain support" error message. I contacted support and after some back and forth I was told:

The reader automatically associates with the account and region it was first activated under, and there’s no direct way to remove or transfer that registration.

This seems like an unnecessary (ie there is no technical reason) restriction that Square has just to sell more devices.