Has anyone had a customer say their cc was compromised on Square after purchasing at your shop?

A customer emailed to say his wife's card has been compromised with her last two purchases on Square at my shop.  Any thoughts on this?

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Square Champion

Hi @AbbeDiaz.  I have a couple of thoughts.

 

First, this is one of those cases where the customer is not always right.  It sounds like your customer is skipping a lot of steps and landing on what we call a coincidence. Did the customer’s wife buy gas before coming to your shop and use that card?  Did she make an online purchase around the same time?  Etc.  Regardless, on the very few occasions that a customer has informed me of such a coincidence, all I did was thank them for letting me know and let them know I would check into it.  Of course, I also let them know that regardless of where the card was compromised, it obviously needed to be handled by the customer‘S bank.  

 

Now… I’ve been with Square over a decade.  Never in that time have I heard of a compromised card because of a purchase at my, or any other, Square shop.  I guess it is possible, especially if someone had switched/compromised your reader and replaced it with a skimmer.  But in this day of contactless cards with chips and such it is very much less likely than it was 5 years ago.  As long as you keep an eye on your readers and customers can’t “switch” them when you aren’t looking, this is most likely not your problem.

 

What I said is even usually also true if you are talking about purchases in your online shop.  However, I guess it is possible that a hacker could have figured out a way to intercept card traffic between your shop and Square.  But even if this were the case you would be hearing from more than just one customer.  This kind of “man in the middle” hack is usually much larger in scope.

 

My point is that unless you are getting feedback from other customers, this sounds more like an either unlucky customer or a customer who has been targeted by hackers for some reason and should be thinking about taking more preventative measures to protect their financial identity.

 

I hope that helps.

Chip A.
Square Expert & Innovator and member of the Square Champions group. (But NOT a Square employee, just a seller like you)

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