thread Mac address questions in Payments Troubleshooting

Mac address questions

BrooklynBrew — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 08:49:51 GMT

Does the mac address of square terminal ever change? If mac addresses change what would cause the change? I have a system to allow traffic by mac address and I want to make sure my terminal will work without issue. Thank You.

Re: Mac address questions

JK_Fiber_Art — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:26:04 GMT

Hi BrooklynBrew,

MAC addresses never change as they are assigned by the hardware manufacturer and are only used in the local network. And from the more than you want to know category: Each MAC address is unique to the network card installed on a device, but the number of device-identifying bits is limited, which means manufacturers do reuse them. Each manufacturer has about 1.68 million available addresses, so when it burns a device with a MAC address ending in FF-FF-FF, it starts again at 00-00-00. (Don't think that would affect you.)

Re: Mac address questions

Candlestore — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 17:49:43 GMT

@BrooklynBrew ;

Mac Address as was said earlier do not change per device, Except if the device connects multiple ways. Like a computer or cell phone that can connect via 2.4ghz and by 5 Ghz. Each 2.4ghz and 5Ghz will have their own Mac Address on the device. I am not sure if a Square Terminal has both the 2.4 and 5 ghz wifi bands. I did notice this with my Square Stands though. I just updated my stores WiFi to a Mesh network from my old system. My old system I had the stands connect by 2.4 ghz and they have different 5 ghz mac addresses this is how I know this.

Re: Mac address questions

jpleech — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 21:33:57 GMT

Mac addresses do change due to Mac-address privacy on Android.

Re: Mac address questions

Candlestore — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 14:30:23 GMT

@BrooklynBrew ;

After I saw a post of Android devices using Random Mac addresses I googled it and here is what I found:

To check if your Android device has private MAC addresses enabled, you can:

Go to Settings
Tap Network and Internet
Tap Internet or Wi-Fi
Tap the gear icon next to the current Wi-Fi network
Tap MAC address type

To turn on private MAC addresses, tap Use randomized MAC. To turn off private MAC addresses, tap Use device MAC.

While randomized MAC addresses can help protect privacy on public networks, they can cause issues when connecting to home Wi-Fi.

Now if there is a way to check this on a Terminal I am not sure, but maybe you can try to follow the above steps if your able to on a Terminal.

Re: Mac address questions

Candlestore — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 14:31:43 GMT

@jpleech ; Thanks I did not know Android uses Random Mac Addresses, which kind of defeats using a Mac Address to assign Static IP address for devices.

Thanks again

Re: Mac address questions

jpleech — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 02:37:08 GMT

Unfortunatly the base android OS underneath isn't expoed to the user and only the Hardware mac-address is currently shown.