Woocommerce Wordpress Site can't connect to Square anymore

[BrendaMcFarlane]

I've been having trouble with my site's security and it was disrupting my website. Each time this happened I was disconnected from Square. So I'd reconnect. I signed up for Sucuri,looked for Malware and set up a firewall. Now, I can no longer connect my woocommerce website to my Square account. 

I go to my Woocommerce Settings, Then to Square, then click the button "CONNECT TO SQUARE"

I get the woocommerce logo that tells me "You just authenticated Square!" We'd like to redirect you to" and a link to my website. I click on the buttone THAT'S MY SITE - REDIRECT ME 

And I only get the error "invalid action" 
I have reached out to Woocommerce and done all they've said. changed themes, turned off all plugins to test. Nothing worked.
I've reached out to Sucuri and so far have not gotten any help on this problem. My site has been unable to take credit card payments from Square for more than 3 days now. Some of my customers hate using paypal. 

We all know that Square is absolutely no help when it comes to anything woocommerce and woocommerce isn't much help either. 

Is it possible it is a firewall issue? Can I get Sucuri to fix it?
Does anyone here have any solutions? Or do you advise I just ditch Square for another payment solution since they seem incapable of caring about website sale integration. I'd prefer to stay with what we already use and have invested in. But there seems to be no solution. Any help would be great.

[TheRealChipA]

@BrendaMcFarlane Sorry to hear about your issues.  From your description, this is DEFINITELY a problem with the Square -> Sucuri -> Woocommerce communication flow.  And you are not alone.  Here is a link to a WordPress help article on this very subject.  From what I can glean here (and in other places) Sucuri seems to be the culprit here. I doubt that, in this case, Square could do much, since they are obviously providing the correct authentication and links (according to Woocommerce) but then the final connection seems to be blocked or rerouted by Sucuri, causing it to break.

I’d call Sucuri, and even reference the link I provided above from Wordpress.  The ball seems to be squarely (no pun intended) in their court!

Good luck!

[TheRealChipA]

@BrendaMcFarlane One more thing I forgot.  Have you looked at Patchstack as an alternative to Sucuri?  It might be worth some research.  I’m not an expert here, but a quick search of some Wordpress blogs that I trust, it is preferred by quite a few people.

[BrendaMcFarlane]

Yes, I should have searched for an alternative Security more but have tried one other a few years ago which was a completely unhelpful. I'm with Cloudways and they suggested Sucuri and I was desperate. My wp-admin.php keeps getting attacked. We'll see if this helps. I'm in a support dialogue with Sucuri now, we'll see. Email. Painfully slow when your customers are complaining and confused why they can't pay the normal way. But, Sucuri did reply this evening so I'm feeling optimistic. One thing I'm learning, when dealing with support between third parties, you'll need to find ways to get around all the 2FA authentications, for example on your DNS, your host, square. You CAN disable it on square for this. It's these simple things that experts know and I don't. Thanks!

[TheRealChipA]

@BrendaMcFarlane You’re welcome.  That’s why we’re here, especially when you have an issue that Square can’t always help with.  They had a stroke of genius when they created this community.

Yes, you are painfully learning the “joys” of integrating disparate online platforms together.  It’s nice that we can, but internet technology is so antiquated that it sometimes gets in the way.  Of course, upgrading it world-wide is a huge undertaking, so it happens gradually, if at all.  Also, WordPress.  It is, unfortunately, a hotbed of security problems and attacks and random glitches and more.  Any time you have to deal with it, you can expect some issue to crop up that doesn’t have a quick or easy solution.  I threw it out the window years ago, but I had that luxury.  Hopefully Sucuri can help you deal with this, or help you find a different plug-in to deal with it.

Square is not alone here.  They opened their platform to third parties to help their sellers do things that the platform can’t, and probably shouldn’t do.  Unfortunately, there are trade-offs with that openness, for them and for us.

I truly wish you success and resolution soon.  If you think I can help with anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out here.  I used to be deep in this world of tech-geek-stuff but my experience was all admittedly more than 3 decades ago.  Still, if I can help, I will be glad to do so.

Oh.  And trust me.  The experts do NOT always know.  I was one once and what I don’t know can fill a dozen or more internets!

[TheRealChipA]

I’ll add one more observation, just because.  It is safe to assume that:

1. If Square -> WooCommerce used to work
2. AND WooCommerce -> to Square used to work
3. Then when you added SomeThingElse in the middle, all of the above quit working
4. That SomeThingElse is the problem.

Why?  Because since SomeThingElse advertises itself as a solution for problems between x and y, it becomes responsible for ALL problems between x and y.  Obviously, X and Y communicate just fine.  They were designed to do so. The problem is most always the SomeThingElse in the middle.  Unless x or y changes something critical.  Which rarely, if ever, happens.

Just my experience and observation.  In your case, Squiri said it could help, and introduced more problems.  Sad, but true, I believe.

[BrendaMcFarlane]

I have contacted Sucuri and I have referenced and provided the link. I appreciate your help and I will let you know if anything is resolved and how. Thanks so much!

[BrendaMcFarlane]

Update 8-18-22:

Have been unable to connect my Wordpress to my Square Account.

Have been in touch with all three support systems. But in summation: Square blames WooCommerce and Sucuri blames Woocommerce. I feel they are all unwilling to invest the time and energy into fixing the part of the issue that they can control.

1) I suspect the Sucuri's app is the problem because the issue ONLY started happening when I purchased the Sucuri Basic Package and tried to set up a Firewall.

2) I blame Sucuri the company who initially gave me the wrong directions so once I implemented their incorrect directions, the connection broke and I could not get it back. I then contacted them to set it up properly - which took several days - because they did not give me directions on what they needed clearly. Once they managed to set up the firewall correctly, it did not fix the problem.

3) Sucuri points the finger at WooCommerce. (see their note below)

3) I hold Square accountable for being unwilling to invest in a Wordpress Woocommerce plugin that works with their system and/or working better with WooCommerce's app. (See Response Below) 

4) I suspect that Square wants us to use the Square platform (away from our website) so they are making no investment in Wordpress Woocommerce integration helping people integrate

5) I believe that is is also WooCommerce's issue since it is a WooCommerce plugin and it should work or have work arounds for issues. 

6) I suspect WooCommerce has no reason to invest in their WooCommerce Square plugin because they have developed their own system "WooCommerce Pay" (which gets mediocre reviews). In fact, on their response to me they advertise their WooCommerce Payments app with an entreaty to "Get Started Today"!

SUCURI'S RESPONSE TODAY (AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME BETWEEN COMMUNICATIONS IS ABOUT 18 HOURS)

I attempted to connect to square once more, and after doing so, pulled the access logs for your site.

What I'm seeing is that your hosting server is returning a 400 Bad Request error for the connection request:

OMITTED ACTUAL PASTE BUT IT SAYS:  NOT BLOCKED GET 400 /wp-admin/?action=wc_square_connected&_wpnonce=(OMITTED) &square_access_token=

This error is returned by your hosting server, and indicates that there is an issue with the request being made when clicking "That's my site, redirect me" on https://connect.woocommerce.com/

I recommend working with WooCommerce's support channels to troubleshoot this further, as the request that's not being accepted originates from the link they provide on their site, not within the firewall or your site.

Please let us know if you have any further questions,

SQUARE'S RESPONSE TODAY

Thank you so much for reaching out and I am really sorry that this issue has not been fixed yet. 
At this time this is what we can do in our end as we do not manage the WooCommerce App directly as we only  integrates with WooCommerce to process payments, the integration is operated and managed by WooCommerce.

Please try to get in touch with WooCommerce one more time and you’ll need to submit a ticket with their Support team.

Thank you for your email, I hope this information is useful. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to reach out with additional questions - always happy to help.

Best regards!

Eder B
Square Customer Success

So, now that I have had final responses from both Sucuri and Square, I have sent the issue back to WooCommerce. We'll see how they respond....

Brenda