thread Discounts Incorrectly Applied in Payments Troubleshooting

Discounts Incorrectly Applied

just_lost — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 13:12:55 GMT

We've found that Square incorrectly applies discounts : example

Item cost before discount £4.95

Discount 50%

Square calculates the discount as £1.62, and the after discount price as £1.63

That means that the discount is therefore less than 50%.

Discounts should always be rounded down, not up as is happening.

This is a major legal and customer service issue: I can't believe that this got through testing.

Can we get this fixed ASAP?

Re: Discounts Incorrectly Applied

MJD — Mon, 17 May 2021 20:36:59 GMT

It seems everything across square is rounded up including our user fees on transactions, @tranguyen will hopefully be able to investigate further on our behalf as to whether there is a legal threat behind this case

Re: Discounts Incorrectly Applied

just_lost — Mon, 17 May 2021 21:15:38 GMT

Thanks Matt, I can't advertise a 50% discount and then apply a discount rule that gives a lower discount. Trading standards would consider that as misleading and would require us to get it fixed. @tranguyen this should be fixed

Re: Discounts Incorrectly Applied

tranguyen — Tue, 18 May 2021 11:26:35 GMT

Hi @just_lost, thanks for sharing this!

@MJD is right; Square uses bankers' rounding for rounding fees and other calculations.

Given the concerns you've shared in this thread, I've raised the issue with the discount rounding above with the appropriate team so they can investigate further.

In the meantime, there are some workarounds we can try to implement to make sure that you can offer discounts to customers:

Rather than using percentage discount, you can create discount for the specific amount you wish to deduct. This would work best if there are only a handful of price points.
Create a variable discount by leaving the value field blank and enter the amount you wish to discount at checkout.

Re: Discounts Incorrectly Applied

just_lost — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 23:05:28 GMT

Any answer on this? It's a fundamental flaw and using the workarounds is something we shouldn't need to do.