Chip Reader declining cards without reason

[mremele]

We have had multiple instances of credit cards being declined by the new chip reader, but are processed without a problem using the old swipe reader. Funds have not been delayed using the swipe and there are no known fraud issues that I can see. Additionally, we just get the regular Declined message so we don't know if it's a funding issue or a reader issue unless we go to the trouble of swiping which is a hassle when we've got a line of people.

Has anyone else had this problem and know what is causing it? 

[ThierrLRC]

The chip reader has some troubles for sure. Mine also declines several cards a day for no apparent reason. It also unpairs itself and sometimes does not want to pair again until we hit "forget this reader" and pretend it is a new one... The tech at Square need to work on these little beasts... Otherwise it is great! Just fix these bugs please.

Thierry

[mremele]

When the chip declines, do you also bypass and just use the old swiper? Trying to differentiate between chip declines and people just having problems with their banks.

Thanks.

[Spenser · Accepted solution]

Your payments shouldn't be declined on the basis of using a chip reader or not, @mremele. Can you let me know the exact error you see in these instances?

If a payment is "Declined," that notification would come from the customer's bank and you would also find record of it in your Transaction Status Report. If the message is more along the lines of "Payment Failed," it would indicate a technical issue, whether that's the payment timing out (weak connection) or worn-out credits cards, etc. Let me know!

[mremele]

Our sales are intermittent and involve a line of people being charged very quickly. So I did some research on the first day we ever used the chip reader. Square is in line with my memory of that day:

24 sales in 30 minutes. Square shows all sales as dipped except for the last 4 which were swiped. (I had the declined people step aside until the end.) I see that these four cards were successfully swiped at the end of the sale. Further, looking at the status report, we have 4 declines which are the same 4 that were swiped at the end (I'm using the last 4 digits of the CC to crosscheck). To recap, the status report shows Declined for credit cards that were successfully charged just minutes later via swipe.

This decline by chip has been repeated over every sale that we have had. Unfortunately, we won't have a sale for a few more months and I keep forgetting to take a screenshot. If I ever remember, I will post the actual error message.

I also reviewed the status report for this entire year and the only description is "Declined." We have no "Payments Failed" messages at all.

[Spenser]

Thanks for following up, @mremele! 

Sorry, I should clarify that when I say "failed" I mean that we were not even able to attempt the charge, due to a connection issue or some other interruption. So that's correct that failed payments wouldn't be on the report, as they would never have reached our servers. (That's where the specific error message would be helpful!) 

More to the point, I'll add that if a transaction was swiped or dipped, and is on your status report as "Declined," then that decline would have come from their bank. Square will only decline transactions if something was miskeyed in a manually entered transaction.  

So regardless of dipped or swiped, we'd be receiving the decline notice from the customers bank for the first attempts in these examples. I won't be able to look at specific transactions here in the Community, but definitely feel free to contact our Support team if you'd like us to do so!

[VanKalkerFarms]

I have not had a declining problem with the chip card reader.  We have made 6170 transactions so farthis year and 3670 have been Chip cards, with only 2 declines all year which is well below normal for this time of year.  I have had like 15 times were it didn't read the chip right so I just stuck it back in.

[mremele]

Since I posted this, I have found out that there are two chip readers, I thought there was only one. I have the wireless one that also takes apple pay (no one has used apple pay yet unforturntely). Anyway, I think there's also one that plugs into the headphone jack. Which do you have?

Also, if I may ask, how do you know how many chip cards you have taken. I don't see that info when I download the transaction detail.

Thanks.

p.s.

Just processed 200 charges in an hour. Had about 10 chip declines that were solved by swiping.

[tlkenney]

I have had this problem several times in the past month, and the only way a transaction will go through is to manually enter it, causing me to pay a higher fee. I am hoping Square will reimburse those fees, but not holding my breath. 

[_Violet]

Hi @tlkenney - I'm sorry to hear that this issue with your Contactless + Chip Reader has brought you to the Seller Community.

It sounds like your device may be having some trouble connecting to your reader. I recommend following the troubleshooting steps listed here.

Please let me know whether or not that improves things for you. I'll keep an eye out for your reply! 👀