We used developer environment to setup square for our clients. Tested with all CC types and it worked well in development environment. Pushed code to production. Worked well until lasst week. As of mid-week last week, Clients who are trying to pay with MASTERCARD are getting a GENERIC DECLINE message and their card is not accepted. Is there an issue with SQUARE accepting MASTERCARD at this time and if so, when will it be resolved. This is a big deal.
When your customers got this error did you instruct them to contact there bank? 
Hi Bryan—The client verified that their card was valid and it has worked with other online sites, gas stations, grocery stores, etc.
Then they called square support and square said there were issues with square accepting MasterCard payments.
I’m the developer of the website. MasterCard tests fine in the development environment.
MasterCard was being accepted without issue until mid-last week.
I just called square support and the person there said there is no support for their development environment which I thought was very strange.
They said MasterCard is being accepted and there are no documented issues with this right now.
We integrated SQUARE into our website using the SQUARE APIs provided through square.
We use the SQUARE API to Create a ‘CreatePaymentRequest’. It sends to SQUARE successfully but returns with an ERROR.
The ERROR MESSAGE returned in the response has a GENERIC DECLINE message.
This works fine/well for other CCs and like I mentioned, was working fine until middle of last week.
And, I forgot to mention. It happens to any client using a MasterCard for their transaction.
It does not happen to clients using VISA.
Do you have an example declined payment_id?
We didn’t trigger_error the entire RESPONSE w/ERRORS.
I’ll add that code tonight and ask the client to rerun the transaction.
That should give us the entire response object, including error detail that returned.
Response/error from SQUARE:
“errors”: [{“code”: “GENERIC_DECLINE”,“detail”: “Authorization error: ‘GENERIC_DECLINE’”,“category”: “PAYMENT_METHOD_ERROR”}],“payment”: {“id”: “l6gio1o9fr4YyaxGiYqdgP0dyODZY”,“created_at”: “2024-04-22T18:55:32.169Z”,“updated_at”: “2024-04-22T18:55:32.800Z”,“amount_money”: {“amount”: 1061,“currency”: “USD”},“status”: “FAILED”,“delay_duration”: “PT168H”,“source_type”: “CARD”,“card_details”: {“status”: “FAILED”,“card”: {“card_brand”: “MASTERCARD”,…{removed this section} “card_type”: “CREDIT”,“prepaid_type”: “NOT_PREPAID”,“bin”: “524366”},“entry_method”: “KEYED”,“cvv_status”: “CVV_ACCEPTED”,“avs_status”: “AVS_ACCEPTED”,“errors”: [{“code”: “GENERIC_DECLINE”,“detail”: “Authorization error: ‘GENERIC_DECLINE’”,“category”: “PAYMENT_METHOD_ERROR”}]
Client is now saying they got 1 mastercard transaction to flow. They’ve had several declined with different people—I’m thinking that coincidentally those MasterCards were issued by the same bank (even tho they are different people) and that bank is having issues w/MasterCards. If the payment_id above identifies anything further in your logs, please let me know so that we can share that with the bank involved. Many thanks.
The team is looking into this.
Was there anything further found in your logs connected to the payment-id I provided?
The team is still working on this. I’ll be sure to provide an update when I hear from the team.
I’m currently having an issue with this as well. It’s the same issue with Mastercard, a client is trying to pay me. I also ran into this situation with another client last month where they were having issues paying me via Square. This is not good for my business; it makes me look unprofessional and untrustworthy. I’ve been using Square for my business for nearly a decade, if not longer without many major issues. I’m glad that I found this thread and hope that Square is taking this issue seriously.
As a small business owner, if my clients are having trouble paying me, it affects their experience and also puts me in a compromising position not being able to get paid on time.
I never heard back on this from square development. It has been over a month since the last communication and at that time they said the team was still working on it. Perhaps they can give an update after seeing this persists.
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Is this only for keyed in payments? If so they’ll need to pay with another payment method since this is the customers bank blocking payments from succeeding.
It is for me -yes. Will advise client
Yikes. So Mastercard isn’t allowing customers to key in payments online? That seems wild and bad for business. Would it work if a customer had the payment go through something like ApplePay or if it was saved in their computer/device?
I send my clients an invoice to pay online via a third party studio management system. I just have Square API connected, I rarely use the Square App but I did have an issue when I tried to key in my customer’s card number into Square.
I know a lot of other photographers that take their clients payment over the phone. This is definitely a shame if any of them are using Square for processing. In the photo world, Square has been one of the most popular and well-recommended processors.
Trying to find out solutions here. I had to have my client pay me via PayPal, which is certainly not ideal. They were able to key in their card info on that though?
No, it’s not Mastercard. It’s the issuer of this particular card. Mastercard is still accepted however this particular bank is choosing to block keyed in payments. Our team is working with them to come to a resolution.
Oh I see! Do you know which bank it is?