Square Terminal getting stuck at "Preparing Payment"

Questions
1

We’ve recently deployed a number of Square Terminals using the terminal API. This is mostly working well.

My staff are reporting that the terminals sometimes get stuck at the “Preparing Payment” screen, always with an inserted card. They say that the only way to carry on from that point is to cancel the transaction using the API. Trying again with the same card gives the same result, in any of the Square Terminals deployed at the site. (Image edited to remove all but last four digits of card number.)

signal-2022-10-19-18-42-24-806
signal-2022-10-19-18-42-24-8061205×1600 268 KB

Payment region: United Kingdom. App version 6.1.1. OS version 5.27.0054.

There doesn’t appear to be a pattern to which cards don’t work. It’s not just one bank or card network. Unfortunately the non-working cards don’t belong to me or any of my staff, so testing on demand will be difficult!

Is this a known issue?

2

What was the checkout_id that this happened with? :slightly_smiling_face:

3

I believe the one in the photo was aLcJ8NE2kufqO

4

Ah. Don’t look at that one, they tell me they staged that so they could get the photo for my benefit! (Remote debugging is difficult…)

I have asked them to make a note next time the problem happens; I’ll get the checkout ID from that.

5

Okay, so they don’t have any data about the payment that didn’t go through? Yeah, remote debugging is really hard. lol! Thank you! :slightly_smiling_face:

6

Do you have the device_id that this happened with?

7

I can only narrow it down to a group of three, unfortunately. It’s probably best to wait until the problem happens again. I’ve asked them to make a note of the time of day and amount and I should be able to use that to fish the checkout ID out of the POS system. Sorry!

8

This is an issue ww have started t experience using a standard Square Terminals set up. It requires a full restart of the terminal which - when youve a queue of customers - is frustrating. Ive seen two occurences in the last 2 weeks. The most recent occasion was a John Lewis Partnership store card and I’ve been advised that the previous occasion was a ‘non standard’ card so could have been the same.

9

Do you have the device details, application ID or location_id so we can investigate? :slightly_smiling_face:

10

We’ve had the problem occur again, and this time I have checkout IDs! Two separate devices were tried and the card failed with both of them in the same way. The IDs are: fVhXfWSnS5eqO and 3O3FvsfTnAnqO

(The customer eventually paid in cash.)

11

@Bryan-Square Did you manage to find anything useful from those checkout IDs? (Checking now because I understand they will be deleted automatically at some point.)

12

The checkout_ids were helpful and the team is investigating this. I’ll be sure to reach out with any updates. :slightly_smiling_face:

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