Failed payment

[GK85]

How many of you have got a very bad customer service response from square? I am encountering payment failures due to technology issues from square only after customer leaves. This is my hard earned money being lost!! Square is simply not rectifying or helping to overcome this issue. The response from customer service is cold. If a company is not backing the very technology it’s charging me for how do I trust them? I am thinking very actively to move out as I loved square but felt cheated. If they can’t support me for their own issues, I am scared to use them! Also, customer service agents are literally in informed and lack basic understanding to solve issues. 

[TheRealChipA]

Hey there @GK85.. I understand your frustration.  But I'm not sure how your post helps you get to a solution.  It's entirely possible that we -- your fellow sellers with lots of experience with Square over the years -- can help you.  But nothing you said gives us anything to go on because there are no specifics about what exactly is happening to you.  Sure, we can all list our gripes over the years about issues we've had -- with support and otherwise.  But, at the end of the day, that doesn't help you one bit. So......

If you would like us to give it a shot and see if we can get you to a resolution, please reply with what is happening and be VERY specific.  What is your hardware configuration?  Did the customer swipe, dip or tap their card?  Did it show approved?  How long did it take to get some sort of error message and what was it?  If no error message how, exactly, did you know that the payment failed after the fact?  Hopefully you gave support all of that information, and more, and if you didn't then it is no wonder they couldn't help you.  

Give us a chance to try, unless your only goal here was to complain and not actually ask for help.

[GK85]

@TheRealChipA thanks for a quick and positive reply. I think I was so frustrated that I didnt articulate properly. Let me give an example of what happened atleast 4-5 times in last 1 year.

I sold a merchandise, customer pays using their credit card tap on my iphone Square app, instantly the payment shows a green check (with a click sound you all must be aware of). I presume as always that the payment went through as no reason to believe anything is wrong. Customer leaves with the merchandise. After atleast 5-10 mins suddenly my square app shows a payment failed message and when I check, the transaction is gone! The customer has already left and not in sight any more, I am stuck with my merchandise gone, and no trace of the customer and no credentials left in square app except for that transaction added to the failed transaction list which I see from some kind of report in the app. I have lost atleast $300+ and being a very small business, it means a lot to me.

Customer service has been pathetic and simply denies any help. My question is out of 40-50 successful transactions, why only 2 must fail and even if it fails why square app shows me a green check which means all good and afailure message after only 5+ mins when I cant do anything to get my money back!

FYI, there is no issue with customer card as once I was able to locate the customer in the next shop and he checked his bank and it showed a failed transaction and paid successfully using the same card again.

There are 2 issues :

- A definate technical issue square didnt even bother to fix for years.

- A non responsive, underinformed customer service who doesnt recognizes years of loyalty!

I dont know what to do from here. Please help. And btw, I love everything else about the square app as I grew my business with it, but more frustrated as my loyalty was not even recognized!

[TheRealChipA]

@GK85 Thank you for that description.  I can picture all of that in my head.  In over a decade with Square, I've never experienced this, nor seen it posted here in the Community. So, this definitely sounds like something I'm going to have to enlist help, so I'm going to tag some of the Square moderators here in the Community.  While I'm doing that it would be helpful to post the transactions numbers (and amounts) of a couple of the approved-then-failed transactions. The moderator who joins us should be able to escalate this to the product engineers and have them investigate.

@Kassi_@RSosebee1@_Violet@MayaP@Summer2024@Summer2024@Ellie_@Katie_SQ@Laurie_@Sammie_Cplease see @GK85's excellent explanation of their issue above.  This seems like something that the payments team should look into to me.

[GK85]

Thanks. want to add a  screenshot from my square dashboard but seems there is no button here to add a screenshot so I am just adding a text. .These are from 2025. Please let me know a way I can add an actual screenshot. 

I am really surprised no one got this issue, I discussed with customer service and seemed like they know what it is just don’t know how to help

If you can help me how do i share my screenshot I can share too. (Square dashboard > Reports > Transaction Status)

12/20/2025, 2:31 pm

Visa ending in 0380

$45.00

Canceled

12/07/2025, 2:08 pm

MasterCard ending in 0838

$90.00

Canceled

12/06/2025, 11:14 am

Visa ending in 5637

$40.00

Canceled

10/11/2025, 7:25 pm

MasterCard ending in 9310

$90.00

Canceled

10/05/2025, 2:09 pm

MasterCard ending in 4722

$115.00

Canceled

10/04/2025, 1:02 pm

MasterCard ending in 5260

$41.00

Declined

05/17/2025, 12:40 pm

Visa ending in 0510

$119.00

Canceled

[TheRealChipA]

When you are creating a post, there's a little camera icon in the top tool bar.  Usually you should just have to click on it and select an image to insert inline.  Hopefully we'll hear from a moderator who can help.

[GK85]

Here you go. Thanks. Seems like I need to use desktop to be able to upload screenshot, cant do from phone.

[TheRealChipA]

@GK85 So, it turns out I do have a list of canceled transactions.  But in my case they are explainable.

Canceled status means a transaction was initiated but never completed. This typically happens when:

1. A customer cancels a payment before it processes
2. A payment fails during processing
3. You manually void or cancel a transaction in Square
4. A payment times out or gets interrupted

#1, 2 and 3 happen enough in my busy ice cream shop.  We pay something to cash when we should have hit the card button.  So, we void it and start over again.  Or a payment fails and the customer uses a different card or cash.  Sometimes I get the "McDonald's doesn't charge that much!" so I inform the customer that McDonald's is around the corner and they can buy their future soft serve from them, while I'm cancelling the transaction.

Your issue sound suspiciously to me like a time out of some sort, possibly due to a network error of some sort.  But hopefully the moderators can have the tech team look into a few of those transactions to track down your specific reason.

[GK85]

@TheRealChipA My issue is definately not 1 or 3. Now, my concern is the very moment when I tap the card on phone, it clicks and give me a green check which means the payment went through as in case of all of my payments, and also gives me an option to send a receipt to the customer. How in the world I would know that after 5-10 mins, it will suddenly show me transaction failed? By that time the customer is already left and in no sight. There is no interruption or network issue or anything coz at the very same place I have taken many more payments successfully. 

If there is any technical issue or interruption, it should show me right there and I can ask customer to pay using any other means. Why after 5-10 mins and sometimes even 15 mins? Thats certainly a technical issue that square needs to fix. I am a very very small business and if I keep losing money after paying such a hefty fee to square, whats the point of using it? What I sell is a high value item and creates a big loss for me. Also, there is definately no issue for customer to do anything wrong as I tap the card myself. 

As usual no one from customer care side or moderator reached me yet.

[Summer2024]

Hi, @GK85 - sorry for the delay here. 

I am getting this escalated so hopefully we can get to a resolution since this has been ongoing for so long. 

[Summer2024]

@GK85 - it looks like the app version you are running is over a year old. Can you update to the latest version to see if this still occurs? 

It looks like with one of the payments, it was voided about 5 minutes after the transaction occurred. A void can occur if someone taps the “X” in the top-left corner, or it can happen automatically if the payment isn’t completed within five minutes or the app is interrupted. It could be crashing periodically due to needing to be updated. 

[GK85]

@Summer2024  I updated the app as you suggested today,  but to your point about app crashing, i didnt had that issue so far. The payment goes through very normal as any other successful payment it fails after sometime which makes me loser the customer from the shop with the merchandise and there is no way to contact the customer.

[Summer2024]

Thanks for updating @GK85 !

What engineering meant is that it could be more or less a less obvious crash occurring causing the payment to void due to the software needing an update. 

Please keep me updated on if this happens again after updating.