On Thursday and Friday, Square payments, experienced widespread outages, rendering business clients across the United States incapable of accessing their accounts or conducting credit card transactions. Small-business owners voice grievances over revenue losses and inadequate support due to outages.
At approximately 2 p.m. on Thursday, Adam Blackbill came to the realization that he was not receiving sales reports from his trio of ice cream shops. Since 2014, Blackbill has relied on Square for processing payments at his business, Urban Churn, located in central Pennsylvania. While he’s accustomed to occasional outages, his concern grew as the hours passed. His employees were unable to input orders, and he faced difficulties sending invoices to wholesale customers and accessing funds for withdrawals.
Urban Churn, known for its unique offerings of all-natural and gourmet ice cream flavors such as sauerkraut or roasted cricket, was among many small businesses thrust into turmoil due to an outage affecting Square and Cash App, both financial services platforms operated by Block. This disruption led to sales processing difficulties and prevented employees from logging their work hours.
While the issue appeared to have been resolved by Friday morning, users reported significant damage. Blackbill approximates that his company incurred a revenue loss ranging from $8,000 to $10,000.
Blackbill notes that Square’s offline mode functioned in two of his three stores. Square explains that offline mode enables businesses to accept payments when there is no internet access, with the payments automatically processing when connectivity is restored. However, as of Friday morning, Blackbill reported that approximately 30 of these offline transactions seemed to be unaccounted for.
“On Friday morning, Square sent emails to certain users and shared a message on X, characterizing the issue as a ‘systems outage.'”
Various businesses employing Square, ranging from coffee shops to food trucks, reported revenue declines as they had to inform customers that cash was the only accepted payment method for the time being.
Jesse Stommel, the owner of PlayForge, a toy and games emporium in Littleton, Colorado, inquired if customers could handwrite their credit card details. He noted, ‘Some customers simply left without making a purchase.’ Stommel approximated that he suffered a 30% reduction in his typical weekday revenue. He added, ‘If this incident had occurred on a Saturday, we would have experienced a substantial hit to our weekly business.’
Block’s shares saw a 5.6% decline during afternoon trading.
(Source: Marley Jay | NBC News | Angel Au-Yeung | WSJ)
