Square outage: New tech upgrades, expanded ‘offline’ mode after disruptions hit small business

Square says it has upgraded its internal systems and will expand ‘offline’ payment capabilities after Friday’s major outage, which left merchants across Australia and the world unable to process card transactions for most of the day.

Small businesses across the country lost out on thousands of dollars in sales through the outage, which forced many merchants to accept cash transactions or lose out on sales if their point-of-sale system was not equipped to handle hard currency.

Card payment services returned to normal late on Friday, with the San Francisco-based company apologising to users while confirming a number of fixes resolving the disruption.

After merchants were spared a weekend of compromised trade, Square contacted users directly on Monday morning outlining its plans to avoid and mitigate tech outages in the future.

A new firewall and DNS server changes will “protect us against the issue we saw”, the company said.

The company also intends to expand its offline payment capabilities, which were utilised by some Square merchants who were still able to accept card transactions.

Offline mode allows Square merchants to accept card payments while internet services are unavailable, with those payments fully processed once the internet connection is restored.

During the outage, some Australian merchants said they could accept card transactions through their POS.

However, some merchants said it was unclear if those funds actually flowed through to business bank accounts.

Square has confirmed that payments made in offline mode are being uploaded with a “slight delay before they appear as completed”.

Access to that mode will expand in the future.

“Offline Mode was utilised by many sellers during this recent disruption in order to continue accepting payments,” Square told merchants on Monday.

It will “soon be available on all Square hardware devices and most existing devices”.

Additionally, Square pledged to update its email processes and automated phone messages, after merchants complained of slow communications through the early hours of the outage.

Square is expected to reveal more details about the cause of the outage Monday evening.

Small businesses fear reputation hit from tech outage

While Square systems now appear to be operating normally, some traders feared any payment system outage, no matter how brief, could deter customers in the future.

Rhiannon Druce, general manager of Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory, said small businesses could be scapegoated as a result of the outage.

“It’s not only the loss of revenue, but it’s also the reputation,” Druce told SmartCompany on Friday afternoon.

“A lot of people don’t have the patience to understand that technical difficulties do happen. They just want to blame the business.”

While Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory does accept cash, Druce said not every customer was prepared to visit an ATM to complete their transaction.

“We have had a loss of trade with people just trying to come in for their morning coffee, or those those quick stopovers that people are doing while they’re traveling,” she said.