A Square outage is not something you can fix, but how you respond in the first 15 minutes decides how much it costs you. This guide covers confirming the outage, limiting the damage, and keeping customers informed.
How do I confirm Square is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live Square status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, Square's own status page at issquareup.com. If the official page still shows green, do not assume you are wrong: vendors often acknowledge incidents well after they start. If both look clean, the problem is more likely your store's configuration or a specific integration.
What does a Square outage look like?
- Card transactions declining or hanging at the point of sale
- Square POS app showing connection or processing errors
- Square Online store checkout failing for customers
- Square Dashboard unreachable or missing recent transactions
- Invoices and payment links failing when customers try to pay
What breaks in your store
A Square outage can stop card payments both in person and online at the same time. In-store, card readers and the POS app fail to authorize charges, forcing staff to turn customers away or take cash. Online, Square Online stores can fail at checkout and Square-powered payment forms on other sites decline or hang. Inventory, reporting, and the seller dashboard can also become unavailable, and split incidents sometimes hit payments while the dashboard still loads, or the reverse.
For context, StatusBird's independent monitoring recorded 1 major Square incident in the last 90 days, with an average duration of 17 hours 10 minutes. Details are on the Square reliability page.
What to do during the outage
- Enable Offline Mode in the Square POS app if available, which stores card payments locally and processes them when connectivity returns, noting that declined cards become your risk.
- Accept cash, checks, or a peer-to-peer option like Venmo for in-person sales and record them for later entry.
- Rule out your own internet first by loading another site, since local connectivity failures mimic Square outages.
- For online sales, offer to send customers a payment link from an alternative provider such as PayPal for urgent orders.
- After recovery, reconcile the outage window for duplicate charges from retried transactions before processing refunds.
Frequently asked questions
A customer's card was charged but Square never showed the sale. Did the payment go through?
During an outage a charge can authorize on the card network but fail to record on Square's side, or the authorization may simply drop off the customer's statement in a few days. Do not immediately recharge the customer. Wait for Square to recover, check the transactions list for the payment, and only then charge again if it is truly absent.
Should I use Square's Offline Mode during the outage?
Offline Mode helps when your internet is down, and during some Square outages it can keep card capture working, but understand the tradeoff: payments are only authorized later, and if a card is then declined you have already handed over the goods. Use it for trusted, lower-value transactions and prefer cash for large sales.
After the outage
Once Square recovers, verify the affected workflows end to end rather than trusting the status page. Note the start and end times while they are fresh: if you are on a paid Square plan with an SLA, documented downtime is what a service credit claim is built on. See how to claim SLA credits for the process.
How this data is measured
StatusBird checks Square's status every 2 minutes, around the clock, independently of the vendor. The availability figure counts major and critical outages only; minor degradation is excluded so numbers are not skewed by vendors that report small blips near-continuously. Grades run from A+ to F. See the live numbers on the Square reliability page and current status on the Square status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors Square and 83 other services online stores depend on, plus your own storefront, every 2 minutes. When something goes down you get an SMS, email, or Slack alert with plain-English context, usually before the official status page catches up. Start monitoring free, no card required for the free plan.