NEWS / Square outage hampers commercial invoicing

Online payment processing company Square experienced a major nationwide outage that prevented merchants from being able to process credit and debit card payments. Square is primarily used by small to medium-sized businesses, including A&M Logos International, with a focus in retail, services, and hospitality. The outage also affected payments processed via Cash App, as both services are owned by the same parent company Block, Inc.

The first sign of trouble came early in the morning when merchants started reporting that they were not able to see payments done by customers. At 5:22 am EDT, Square posted that was investigating the “degraded performance” issues on X (also known as Twitter). Square also recommended merchants to stay logged into their accounts to avoid service interruptions.

A&M Logos International routinely uses Square to process credit and debit card payments. Since we were not logged into our account at the time of the incident, we have so far not been able to issue credit and debit card invoices, and according to the latest update from Square, their “engineering team is continuing to work to identify the root cause of this ongoing disruption.” We attempted to contact Square’s customer support, but were informed by an automated message that Square was experiencing a disruption at one of their service centers.

Many retail businesses such as cafes, restaurants, and small locally owned shops often use Square to process payments via credit cards. Square takes out a fee for such payments. The outage left many such business owners indignant.

“So @Square goes down completely leaving every business using their service effectively shut off from payments and they close the support during this?” X user Ken Obloy complained, “How many of my fellow small businesses are shopping for new merchant services today?”

A trip to the local Family Dollar in Kenneth City (Pinellas County), Florida, revealed that a customer was forced to forfeit his purchase due to the fact that his Cash App payment was not going through. The man was visibly frustrated as he had limited time during his lunch break and departed despondently, stating that he will reattempt his purchase sometime later.

Square and Cash App are both owned by Block, Inc., a US-based conglomerate chaired by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter (now rebranded X and owned by billionaire Elon Musk).

Luckily for us, we do not rely exclusively or even primarily on payments processed through Square. We also accept payment via check, money order, wire transfer, Zelle, Venmo, and PayPal. Whatever the payment method, we are always able to generate our invoice for your records. We can also help you prepare invoices for your business, including commercial invoices to be presented to customs officials for the purposes of exporting good abroad. Call us today at (212) 233-7061 or e-mail us at info@apostille.us if you have any questions.