Square launches 21.5-inch Kiosk with AI voice ordering

Square Kiosk has a large pill-shaped body with a 21.5-inch touchscreen and presence detection, so it can greet customers as they approach. Square describes its voice layer as 'agentic and conversational,' able to fully understand the merchant's menu and listen and respond in real time, letting customers ask questions, modify orders or swap ingredients as if talking to a staff member. Payments are handled via contactless reader and card slot. The device is on sale now for $1,999, requiring an existing Square Plus or Premium subscription, plus $99 per device per month in software fees. For fast-food, coffee and other high-frequency ordering businesses, this merges front-counter ordering and payment into one machine, but the fixed hardware-plus-subscription cost directly affects decisions on multi-unit deployment. Support for 'agentic conversation' means menu changes, sold-out items and substitution rules must be read accurately by the system, or voice ordering will simply get orders wrong. Merchants already using Square's POS ecosystem can treat it as an extension of existing workflows rather than a separate system.