Money taken from customers account but transaction doesn’t appear in our account

[Fiorios]

Hi, 

We have been using our Square POS for a year now and have found a pretty concerning flaw. This has happened quite a few times through the year but only became very evident on Thursday night just gone. A couple of customers came to the front desk to pay for their meal and was splitting the payment between 2. The first customer pays their part and all is fine the next customer goes to pay theirs and as it’s finalising it then goes blank on our screen and the transaction disappears.  I ask the customer to check their account and the amounts have come out of both of their accounts and they show me the transaction, however there is no record of this transaction in our system. I can’t charge them again- they have the evidence that they have already paid. So I can only assume the money is sitting somewhere in the ether, as we have not seen it come into our account unfortunately. As this has happened several times, I am naturally concerned with where our hard earned money has gone (as it hasn’t come to us). Customers came back a few days later and they showed us that the money had still come out of their account and hadn’t been reversed. Has anyone else had this experience and can provide some guidance as to how to get the $$ back?

Thank you,

Kristy 

[Sineaid · Accepted solution]

Hi Kirsty,

Welcome to the community, and thanks for bringing your concerns about this to our attention.

From what you’ve described, it sounds like the payments may have been voided. There are a few ways a payment can become voided that could potentially be a factor here. 

• Payments can be manually voided from the tip or signature screen by tapping the “x” in the top-left corner. 
• Payments are automatically voided if they aren’t finished within 5 minutes or the app is interrupted. 
• When you split a payment, if one payment fails, the entire transaction is voided and no funds are collected.

It’s important to note that with Square, a payment is only considered finished when you have passed the PIN screen, or you've received notification in the app that the payment was successful. 

Unfortunately, without access to your account @Fiorios, I wouldn’t be able to take a look at the specifics around these payments to provide more tailored advice. However, our support team will be happy to look into this for you. 

You can contact Square Customer Success through live chat, phone or email — our number is 1800 760 137. We’re available from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, Melbourne time.

[Fiorios]

Thanks for the advice here Sineaid. I appreciate the effort you’ve taken and your feedback. I’ve sent a reply email to a support team member who has reached out to me.

My concern is that the transactions didn’t seem to be voided. The money had come out of both customer accounts and they showed me this on their banking apps and two days later they returned to our restaurant to dine a second time and showed us that the funds were still taken from their accounts and there were no voidings or reversals noted as far as the funds are concerned- it just seems to have been voided from our record of transactions. 

Does that still align with what you’ve mentioned above? Should a transaction be voided but a customer still have the money taken out of their account? I just find that highly concerning- if someone is paying for our goods/services and a transaction is voided in our system but the customer is still being charged and Square is still collecting the funds? 

if you can shed some further light on this I’d really appreciate it- as I couldn’t charge the customer again that night when they are showing me that it had already come out of their accounts. I do appreciate the advice too, as they were all things that I was not aware of. 

Kristy 

[Sineaid]

Thanks for the response Kirsty and apologies, I didn't cover this key point in my original reply.

If a payment is cancelled or interrupted, it may show as a pending transaction on the cardholder’s account. Square sends a void notification to the bank as soon as a payment becomes voided. This notification informs the bank that Square will not be capturing the funds in question. Once this notification has been sent, it is the bank’s responsibility to release any hold on those funds in the cardholder’s account. 
 
If the transaction does not show up in your Transactions in the Square app, but appears on your customer’s card statement, this is a sign that your customer is seeing a pending transaction and not an actual charge. You should also be able to see canceled transactions from the Reporting tab of your Dashboard under > Transaction Status.
 
With a voided transaction, please be assured that no funds are captured or collected by Square.

Again, our Customer Success team would be best placed to provide you with a definitive answer on these transactions, but I hope you find the additional information useful @Fiorios.

[ChillNL]

I have raised this issue a number of times as well. 

Traditional Eftpos machines will print a void transaction receipt if the transaction doesn't go through.  Square will show failed transaction on the screen for a few seconds - this doesn't leave the customer with anything tangible to say the transaction was voided.  

Customers have to trust us when we ask to charge them again - in some instances, the transaction will disappear from their account in a matter of minutes, it has taken 6 days once with one very irate customer.

We need to be able to print a void transaction receipt from the POS.  Yes I am aware you can access transaction status in the dashboard, however not all of my team have access to this, and if we are busy, we can't afford the time to sit down and print out the report from the dashboard.

We have printed out an info card to give customers with the information provided by customer support previously.  This still isn't quite enough if a customer can see the transaction has left their account.  

I am also yet to see 'pending' on a customers transactions in the Banking app - transactions look like genuine finalised transactions.

[Laurie_]

Hi @ChillNL,

I'm stepping in to offer some additional guidance.

We understand that explaining to customers that voided payments appear as pending charges can be challenging. This can vary depending on the bank, but generally speaking, customers will see a debited amount for the transaction total in their statement history. However, their actual account balance won't reflect this deduction. For such situations, you can refer to our Payment Failure Troubleshooting guide, which provides a detailed explanation of the customer experience for a voided payment.

Regarding receipt printing, we appreciate your feedback and will forward it to the relevant teams. We'll keep you updated here if there are any future updates to share.

While we can't investigate specific payments through the Seller Community platform, I recommend reaching out to our phone Support Team to confirm the voided status of those payments. Our team can also email you confirming the details of the attempted payment and its voided status, which you can then forward to your customers.

[ChillNL]

HI @Laurie_ 

We have tried the Auto print Void ticket, however this will print a kitchen void ticket if you delete items from an order, or void a whole order.  It does not print a void receipt associated with a a failed payment transaction.

Thanks,

[Laurie_]

Thanks for highlighting this for me, @ChillNL. I apologise for the oversight on my side. There's certainly room for us to clarify the function of this printer setting. I've updated my previous response and forwarded both your feedback and the feedback from your initial post to my team for review.