How to resolve the error message that phone is rooted when connecting reader?

[jonpn]

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Square POS claiming my unrooted phone is rooted, urgent assistance needed

I have been running Square POS on my RealMe 3 Pro for the last year or so without issue, and then last week following a RealMe update my Chip / Contactless reader decided that my phone was no longer secure and a session could not be established.

Not a problem, I simply transferred the POS app to my Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G, and voila everything worked fine. I had an update to One UI 4.1 from Samsung 2 days ago, and now my Square POS app is telling me that my (unrooted, ever) phone is now a rooted device and is therefore not secure. This is the same phone that HSBC, Santander and Barclaycard all deem to be entirely secure enough following the update to allow me to keep using their apps.

I am expecting to be told that because Android has a bazillion variations, or that because Samsung did an update, that there's nothing Square can do. This is all fantastic, except that it doesn't really help, as I am now going to lose hundreds of pounds in income due to not being able to take card payments in any way.

If anyone has any ideas to make this work (I've disabled screen overlay, tried Bluetooth tethering, uninstalled and reinstalled the Square app, ensured Developer options are off, have reset my phone many, many times, cleared Bluetooth cache, forgotten the device in Bluetooth, etc.

I really need a hand here, and similar issues in other topics don't seem to get resolved very often which is a worry.

[Breffni · Accepted solution]

Hi @jonpn, thanks for raising this here. 

Sorry to hear you've run into this issue, I can understand how stressful it is. 

I had a look at our device compatibilty page and there shouldn't be any issue connecting to the Galaxy S20 5G, as you had done. 

I'm not sure what happened with the update afterwards but unfortunately as you've already seen on other threads, the Reader can't currently support the following:

Rooted devices or devices that have had their software modified

It sounds like you've already done all the possible troubleshooting, the only remaining option we have is If your device is showing as rooted, you’ll need to factory reset the mobile device altogether. 

(Please note that some types of firmware modification aren’t fixed by factory resetting, only by reflashing the firmware completely.) 

In terms of taking payments in the meantime, you can still manually enter your customer’s card details into the Point of Sale app. I know it's not the most convenient and that the fee's are higher, but it's just an option to bear in mind until another solution is available.