Square has launched the Square Kiosk, a self-ordering machine with a touchscreen and an AI voice agent that takes your order by conversation. According to The Verge AI, you can ask it questions and request changes the same way you’d talk to someone at the counter. It’s available starting today, but only for Square sellers on certain subscription plans.
This is Square’s move into a market where restaurants have spent years putting up touchscreen kiosks. What’s new is the voice layer. Square describes it as an “agentic, conversational voice layer” that “fully understands a seller’s menu and listens and responds in real time, enabling customers to order the way they’d naturally talk to staff.”
🧾 What the Square Kiosk Actually Does
- It takes orders by conversation: You don’t have to tap through menus. You can talk to the AI agent, ask questions about items, and ask for modifications or substitutions. Think “Can I get that without onions and swap the fries for a salad?” said out loud instead of five screens of checkboxes.
- It learns the seller’s menu: Square says the agent “fully understands” each seller’s menu. That matters because a generic voice assistant would trip over a coffee shop’s seasonal specials or a taqueria’s custom combos. Tying the AI to the menu data already in Square’s system is the smart part of this launch.
- It has a 21.5-inch touchscreen: Voice is optional. The pill-shaped kiosk has a 21.5-inch touchscreen, so customers who’d rather tap and scroll can still order the usual way. That fallback is important, because plenty of people won’t want to talk to a machine in a loud, crowded restaurant.
- It notices when you walk up: Presence detection lets the kiosk greet customers as they approach, Square says. It’s a small touch, but it nudges people to start ordering instead of hovering in line wondering if the screen is on.
- Payment happens on the device: When you’re done, you pay through a built-in contactless reader or card slot. Ordering and checkout happen on one device, which is the whole point of a kiosk.
💰 Pricing and Availability
The Square Kiosk is available now. Here’s what it costs, as reported by The Verge AI:
- Hardware: $1,999 per device
- Software: $99 per device, per month
- Eligibility: Businesses on a Square Plus or Premium subscription
Do the math and the first year comes to roughly $3,187 per kiosk, not counting the subscription itself. For a busy quick-service spot, one kiosk that takes orders during a rush could pay for itself fast. For a small café, that monthly fee per device is a real line item to think about.
🧠 Why This Matters
What stands out here is who’s getting access. Voice AI ordering has mostly been a big-chain experiment. Fast-food giants have tested AI at the drive-thru, with mixed results. Some pilots drew public complaints about garbled orders, and at least one major chain has said publicly it’s rethinking where voice AI fits.
Square is putting the same kind of tech in front of independent restaurants and small businesses. They don’t have engineering teams to build custom voice systems. If the kiosk works well, a neighborhood burger joint gets an ordering setup that only national brands could afford a couple of years ago.
It also shows a broader trend. “Agentic” AI is moving off laptops and into physical hardware: AI that takes actions, not just answers questions. Restaurants make a good test case, since staffing is tight, menus are structured, and every order ends in a clear transaction.
⚠️ Open Questions
The announcement leaves a few things unanswered:
- Accuracy in noisy rooms: Restaurants are loud. How well the agent handles background chatter, accents, and people changing their minds will decide whether customers trust it.
- Upselling behavior: There’s no word yet on whether the AI suggests add-ons, or how pushy that might get.
- Customer comfort: Some people will love talking to a kiosk. Others will find it awkward with a line of strangers behind them.
Square clearly expects voice to become a normal way to order, with the touchscreen as a backup. The real test starts now, in actual restaurants with actual lunch rushes. You can find more details in the original report from The Verge AI.