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Block Inc’s Square merchant-processing unit late Tuesday introduced Square Go, a booking app for beauty and personal-care merchants. The app allows consumers to search for, and schedule appointments with, health and beauty merchants locally.
The mobile app also suggests merchants based on a consumer’s previous booking patterns. Consumers can receive appointment notifications through the app and confirm, reschedule, or cancel appointments. Square found a 55% decrease in no-shows among Square Go users, and 23% of users have a 23% higher rebook rate than non-Square Go users. All appointment bookings and changes are immediately imported into the merchant’s calendar.
Planned enhancements to the app include a waitlist for customers unable to book appointments at their desired time, more advanced merchant recommendations, staff profiles, and the ability to pay in-app.
“This launch marks a significant milestone for Square sellers and their customers as we continue investing in software that equips businesses with powerful omnichannel tools,” Square chief executive Alyssa Henry says in a statement. “We believe Square Go is an important step in helping sellers make more sales by offering seller discovery and exceptional customer experiences.”
Henry added Square Go will enter new markets. “While we’re starting with beauty and personal care, Square Go will expand into additional industries to enable even more sellers and their customers,” she said.
In related news, Practice Better, a practice-management platform provider for health and wellness professionals, has added integrated payments. Health professionals using the platform can process payments, manage credit card data, take pre-payments online, set up flexible payment plans, and invoice customers, through a single platform.
As a result, health and wellness providers using Practice Better no longer need to support multiple integrations to payment providers and can gain better visibility into their performance as data from the payments apps flows into their other back-office apps, such as accounting.
Developed by Green Patch Inc., a Toronto-based software company, Practice Better relies on technology developed by Stripe Inc., and is used by more than 10,000 health and wellness practitioners.
“The launch of Practice Better Payments will help our customers stay one step ahead and meet their clients where they are— whether that’s with online payments, contactless terminal payments, or custom payment plans—securely and effortlessly,” Practice Better chief executive Kim Walsh says in a statement. “With this launch, we’re also giving practitioners unprecedented insight into their own business with automated, unified reporting across online and brick-and-mortar payments, so they can identify opportunities for growth.”
