Cash App in offline mode?

[Lynn_TRU]

To cut to the chase: how can we accept Cash App payments while in offline mode?

TLDR exposition:

The internet access at our shop hasn't been reliable as of late, and we're forced into offline mode more often than we'd like, for extended periods (e.g., 4 hours). Many of our customers no longer carry cash, and the $50 cap we've established for offline card payments has been affecting sales, so we’re seeking other options. Accepting checks is not an option for us. Using a mobile phone’s wifi hotspot as an internet connection has proved too finicky: sometimes it works, but after a while it locks up.

A friend quipped "Can't customers pay via Venmo?"  Some forum searching shows that Venmo support is presently only for beta customers, but Square prefers its Cash App alternative anyway, which is supported today. So we’ve started looking into it.

While in offline mode, what we need is a way for the customer to scan the displayed QR code to make a payment, and then show the cashier some "payment has been made" screen on their phone, at which time the cashier can mark the transaction as paid & issue a receipt. (This would be similar to but even better than offline credit card payments, since the payment can be processed immediately instead of queued up until register connectivity is restored.)

Unfortunately, testing shows Cash App doesn't work that way. It seems our register needs connectivity before Cash App will process the payment: even though the customer goes through all the steps, it doesn’t show up in the customer’s payment activity log for the cashier to see, and there’s no “paid via Cash App” choice that the cashier can tap. (A test showed that if register connectivity is immediately restored, then it quickly processes the payment, & the payment shows up in the customer’s activity log.)

I suppose we could instruct our cashiers to use More > Other payment types, but that’s not very streamlined, and I suspect - but haven’t tested - that once we do that, Cash App will not process the payment since it will likely think payment was received in some other tender.

Am I missing something obvious? How can we accept Cash App (or any comparable solution) payments while our system is in offline mode?

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hey @Lynn_TRU.  The short answer is that cash app payments will not work in offline mode.  Also, I’ve heard of no plans to accept Cash App as an offline payment method in the future.  I can see a few technical reasons why this might not ever be a thing, really, but Square could surprise me.

One alternative would be to enter transactions on your phones when your internet is down, using the Square POS app there.  Then you could accept manual payments at least and hopefully even tap-to-pay if you have that enabled.

Another alternative would be the one I use.  I have a Stripe account so I can process cards when my internet connection is down.  Once in offline mode on our POS, we enter the transaction and then use mobile Stripe to run the card.  Once approved, we just “pay” the transaction to check or something we never use.  Then, all we have to do is reconcile our Stripe payments and deposits with the transactions we paid as check.  It works beautifully for us, and was a lifesaver during the great outage of late 2023!  I can elaborate more on this if you are interested.

[Lynn_TRU]

Your thorough answer is much appreciated - thank you! 🙂