Square deactivated my account and has not released my money after 90+ days.

[mcio]

Signed up for Square in early June, processed my first (and only) transaction, and my account was suspended a week later. Received an email from them stating I had to wait 90 days to get my money (which has now come and gone). Tried emailing, support chat (which is apparently not functioning), and calling (the system won't give me a live person no matter what I do). My dashboard is still visible and the money is still there but not transferring to my linked bank account.

Square is bizarre. Had an Intuit account for over a decade and processed thousands of transactions with absolutely no issues and only left them because I stopped using Quickbooks. 

Anybody here ever have Square just hold your money indefinitely?

[Donnie-M]

@mcio If you don't mind if I can ask you a question, because I do see this asked from time to time:

1.  Was the card present for the transaction or was this over the phone/online?

2. What was the amount of the transaction?  over 500$ over 1000$ over 2000$  etc.

Did you get a request for verification e-mail?  and was it a customer you do business with regularly?  last question what kind of business do you do generally? restaurant? retail? etc.

[mcio]

It was an over the phone transaction from a customer we have had for over a decade. Just under $1,000.

We are a wholesaler of industrial components used in medical and industrial x-ray. Just so odd. Our company has been around a very long time and sells to government agencies and universities pretty frequently. Nothing sketchy about our business. I think square's algorithm for determining "risk" is really messed up. Found another service provider and there are no issues whatsoever. Just annoying that Square won't release money after 90+ days. Our email is verified.

[Donnie-M]

@mcio ok it makes a lot of sense now, but I understand the frustration.  Unfortunately, square doesn't know your business like you do.  What they saw is a non-emv transaction for almost 1000 bucks on a brand new account...and it was the first transaction.  So with no history, this is one of the highest risk transactions there is for a credit card.  With the emv shift, those types of transactions can be disputed very easily and the business loses every time.

On verification, you should have gotten an e-mail to maybe verify business details and transaction details.  If you didn't get that  I would search and make sure it didn't get dumped into a spam folder or just missed.

Otherwise, log into the online dashboard, hit the question mark at the top right and then the support link down at the bottom.  The chat assistant will pop up and just be clear that you have an account question about verification and transfers.  Hopefully you can get this resolved.

[mcio]

Thanks for your reply. I just don’t get why they wouldn’t do a minimal amount of research on our business. I had used intuit for a very long time with zero chargebacks. What really bothers me though is why aren’t they releasing the payment now that 90+ days have passed? I’m on a charitable board that uses Square and I have a bad feeling about using them moving forward.