Two mobile payment giants – Cash App and Square – are still having issues nearly 24 hours after they were reported down for thousands of users Thursday afternoon, leaving many small merchants unable to process payments.
The widely used payment services, owned by Block, first reported troubles with the mobile processing of payments and other features just before noon Thursday for users mainly in the US and UK.
Square specifically is used by thousands of small businesses as an alternative to large point-of-sale systems, and Square customers were not too happy, taking to social media and complaining of lost business revenue and poor customer service in response to the situation.
“Some customers may be experiencing issues sending payments, purchasing Cash Card, and accessing other features. Our team is actively working on a fix. If you encountered an error in app, please don't reattempt the action. We're working to resolve everything as quickly as possible,” Cash App posted on X (formally known as Twitter).
By late afternoon, Square posted its own message on X stating it was “currently experiencing issues with multiple Square services and actively working toward a fix.”
As of Friday at about 11 am ET, it seems the technical issues at Cash App were mostly resolved, while Square was still experiencing intermittent issues for most users.
“Hi there, We're continuing to resolve the outage that impacted multiple features of the app. Most services are currently back online. However, you may still experience brief delays as we continue to resolve all features.” the latest Cash App status post stated.
Cash App informed users that features such as adding cash to their accounts, buying Bitcoin, and making purchases using the app were up and running in the early hours of Friday morning, but still no word on peer-to-peer payments or retrieving funds from a user's own account.
Meantime, on the Square status page, the app was more forthcoming on what caused the abrupt stop in services, possibly because of the backlash from customers.
“We are currently investigating a disruption that is impacting Square Stands and Readers connected via USB on Point of Sale version 6.24. Impacted Sellers may see a message indicating that the reader has disconnected,” Square said.
“If you are seeing this on your account, it is recommended that you connect to Bluetooth for the time being. If you have not updated to 6.24 yet, we recommend waiting to do so until we hear more information.”
Square then said its engineers have come up with a solution but users will have to wait until it's released via an “upcoming Square Point of Sale update (version 6.25.1)” with no word on when that will be.
One Square user posted on X, “Obviously no one @Square has ever owned or operated a small business. The lack of clarity, transparency and solutions to assist your customers is appalling. And the corporate PR lines aren’t helpful to those of us running small businesses depending on your services. #squaresucks.”
Another X user said her team lost at least $2,000 in sales because of the debacle.
St Francis Apizza in Cincinnati, Ohio, also posted about lost sales after using offline mode as suggested by Square in an Instagram post directed at its users Friday morning .
“...here’s what we charged in offline mode that magically disappeared overnight, a total loss for us: $651.76. Basically every other transaction processed, no rhyme or reason,” @stfrancisapizza posted along with Square’s IG instructions.
The Cash App mobile payment service reports over 70 million annual users and $1.8 billion in gross profit.
Square boasts two million merchants and approximately 295 million items listed on the app by sellers, with revenues of $17.5 billion in 2022, as reported by the statistics website DMR.
No word on exactly what it was that caused the outages, although Square said it would publish a full report on the matter once resolved.
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