Clients can't book appointments online due to cards being rejected by square

[katpriilinn]

I have an appointment based barbershop in Australia and some banks have flagged Square as dodgy due to people asking for card transaction refunds I guess. For that reason they're not able to make the appointment when they have to either secure the card on file or put it in for no show protection. 

When I make an appointment myself my bank (commonwealth) gives me a warning for a dodgy transaction! That doesn't leave a professional image of my business booking system.

When will Square do a deposit system rather than card capture?

This is costing my business as much money probably as just having no shows... Makes me want to change to Timely due to them having a deposit system!

[Laurie_]

Hey there, @katpriilinn,

Thanks for taking the time to share this experience with us and for the feedback! 

I'm not sure I'm understanding the reason Square would be flagged for payments because customers have requested refunds. Are you able to elaborate a little more on the type of notification you receive from your bank when booking an appointment online with no-show protection? I want to ensure I'm on the same page with you here before I flag this to my team.

Square Appointments doesn’t currently support pre-authorising payment cards or collecting security deposits. These features aren’t on the Square Appointments roadmap for 2023, but they’re popular feature requests we continue to advocate for with our Product Team. If we'll be making any changes to these processes in future, we'll be sure to share an announcement with Australian Sellers.

Sorry, I don't have any further details I'm able to share with you at this time. In the meantime, I'll keep an eye out for your response.

[katpriilinn]

Hi thanks you for your reply. 

Not sure why Square gets flagged but it happens often. Before we had the card capture for no show protection and every second time we weren't able to charge the card which beats the purpose of having card capture for no show protection. I am able to send you screenshots of the notifications that I receive when I try and book it myself. My bank app notifies me of a possible fraudulent action. My clients have notified me of the problem on many occasions and I have notified Square aswell with no help on the matter unfortunately. 

There is a Square users fb group who complain about the same problem too. It's unfortunate that security deposit collection isn't on the development list as it's making many appointment based businesses consider Timely as they already have that feature. Currently my business is taking a loss with clients not able to make appointments AND not being able to charge all the clients due to card blocking transaction/card with no funds being used to secure the appointment. Square system is so convenient to use but as you can imagine this is not viable for an appointment based business to be losing bookings AND no show fees. 

Kind regards, 

Kat

[Laurie_]

Hi @katpriilinn,

Thank you for providing these additional details in your response.
 

After reviewing your previous interactions with our team, I was able to locate the specific case you mentioned. It appears that you reported an issue with payment when customers tried to book appointments online through Square Appointments. Our advocate promptly escalated this matter to our engineering team, who diligently worked on fixing the problem with online payments.
 

We advised you to reach out to us again if the issue resurfaced. It's certainly not the expected behaviour for customers to receive such notifications when booking online, and we would like to investigate this further in collaboration with you.
 

If you choose to reach out to our Support Team about this matter, they can access your case history to review the steps that were previously taken. You can call support on 1800 760 137 (Mon - Fri, 9 am - 5 pm Melbourne time).
 

Regarding the ability to secure a deposit for appointment bookings, unfortunately, I don't have an immediate solution. I completely understand and agree with your point that this feature would be beneficial in protecting Square Appointment Sellers from cancellations and no-shows. We are continuously advocating for such enhancements with our Product Team, and rest assured that once we have any updates to share, we will promptly announce them.

If there is anything else I can help you with, please do not hesitate to let me know.