thread Re: Square app erroneously says that card is inserted in contactless & chip reader in Payments Troubleshooting

Square app erroneously says that card is inserted in contactless & chip reader

S7Jordan — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 11:45:53 GMT

After 15 months with no live events, I finally participated in an art fair two weekends ago. An unexpected number of customers paid in cash. I noticed that when a credit customer was followed by a cash customer, the Square app on my iPhone still said "card inserted" while ringing up the cash sale even though no card was in the reader. I was afraid to press the "charge" button to complete the sale for fear that the previous customer's card would be charged. The only workaround that I could find was to kill the iPhone app completely and start over. This happened several times throughout the day and really slowed down the checkout process. Has anyone else seen this happen? Has Square technical support been notified?

iOS version: 14.6 (latest)

Square app version: 5.67.1 (latest)

Re: Square app erroneously says that card is inserted in contactless & chip reader

Valentina — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 22:31:23 GMT

Hi there @S7Jordan - I haven't heard of this, but I can assure you that it is not possible for a previous customer's card to be charged if it is not physically inserted into the contactless reader. As long as you're selecting cash, you are simply reporting a payment and not processing anything. Have you gone through the other troubleshooting steps here yet?

Re: Square app erroneously says that card is inserted in contactless & chip reader

S7Jordan — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 16:24:07 GMT

Thank you for responding. Yes, I did all of the necessary troubleshooting. I exhibited at another event yesterday and this problem never came up because only one customer paid in cash. I hope that it is indeed resolved! I'll report back if it happens again.