thread Declined payments in Payments Troubleshooting

Declined payments

Frank10 — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 20:03:14 GMT

During an out of town 2 day event we ended up with 11 declined payments. We did not realize our Square was offline. Is there any way to recoup those sales amounts.

Re: Declined payments

TheRealChipA — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 20:37:33 GMT

Hi @Frank10. One of two things happened here.

First, the transactions might have been declined because it was longer than 24 hours before they were taken. Square includes a reminder/warning that if we are going to accept offline transactions, we must connect to the internet within 24 hours or those transactions will be automatically declined. That known risk is ours alone.

If you did get onto an internet connection within 24 hours, declined payments happened because the customer’s bank declined them, due to insufficient available balance or something. That’s a big part of the risk of turning offline mode on. We assume all of the risk of those transactions should they later be declined. We do have the ability to set a “pain” threshold for accepting them, if we wish. But the risk is ours, and ours alone, and Square makes that clear.

All Square POS software displays a big red bar at the top whenever it is not connected to the internet. Always look for that in the future, if you decide to keep offline mode on.

Anyway, unfortunately there is no way to recoup these transactions. If you think this is going to happen a lot in the future I would recommend turning off offline mode entirely. It would be much better to only accept cash rather than giving away product. I’m sorry this has happened to you, and I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Regards,

Re: Declined payments

aromalover — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 17:54:30 GMT

I didn't notice I was using the offline mode during a market and lost hundreds of dollars in sales. I was completely unaware. Now I know. My first few sales went through. I thought I was good to go for the day and online. To answer a question I read, no, Square doesn't notify you that there are pending offline payments that need to be "moved" from the terminal to the internet/square. No warning at all. I found out over a month later because I missed the 24-hour cut-off. But remember, I didn't know they were offline sales, nor did I see anything warning me that they were offline when I added up the sales from my terminal. I had to calculate my sales and give 20% to the market. It was a fundraiser. So there you go. Oh, and there is no way to contact the customer(s). I was told what I need to do is have a book in which I write down the name, phone number, and last 4 digits of the card to keep in case of this happening or any problems. I was hoping they would offer some free processing fees to help out a small business to offset my loss, but it was a no. I REALLY think a warning email text or message or even the sales being in red so they stand out would be nice. It seems doable. I truly had no idea. I didn't realize the mode was turned on and an option (my bad?), so I turned OFF the offline mode. That way, I have to turn it on if the internet is spotty manually. Not happy.