thread Re: Debit MasterCard (Canada) in Payments Troubleshooting

Debit MasterCard (Canada)

ashill — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 16:33:05 GMT

We've had a number of transactions declined recently. I *think* they are all debit MasterCards that have been declined, with error messages saying "card not accepted" or "use a different card".

I know that one card that was rejected today was a Simplii Financial card with both MasterCard and Interac logos. I also tried my own EQ Bank prepaid MasterCard (no Interac logo; the banks says it’s treated as a “prepaid reloadable MasterCard”); it was also declined. Credit cards and Interac-only debit cards appear to work fine. Is this expected? Is there anything to do?

This is in Canada using tap to pay on iPhone (ie using the iPhone to accept tap with no separate hardware).

Re: Debit MasterCard (Canada)

frances_a — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 01:37:19 GMT

Hello @ashill 👋

Sorry to hear about this issue!

Are those declined transactions shown on your Transactions screen?

If they are, you can review the details right from that screen and our support team can assist.

Here in the Community, we have no access to see details for specific transactions, unfortunately.

Thank you.

Re: Debit MasterCard (Canada)

ashill — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 02:03:54 GMT

I’m afraid the declined transactions do not show up in the transactions list. I just tried my prepaid MasterCard again: it gets declined immediately on being tapped, before Square visibly communicates with the network to authorize the transaction.

I was mainly wondering if this is a common issue or a known incompatibility, either generally with prepaid cards in Canada or with prepaid cards using tap to pay on iPhone.

Re: Debit MasterCard (Canada)

BernadetteA — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 02:35:09 GMT

Thanks for posting, @ashill

According to this article, the prepaid card with the Mastercard logo should be accepted. It does seem like there is a larger issue going on, though, if it is only happening with Mastercard cards. I will try to look into this further to see if anything has been reported.

Thanks in advance for your continued patience.