Suddenly being asked to reverify your ID?

[osd]

I'm passing this along to everyone else so they don't receive the same unnecessary frustration that I did.

I have held my square account for over 1 year. It was in the recent 2 months that I have received an email with the square logo where I'm asked to "reverify" myself or that things related to my account would be terminated.

In the recent email, I'm asked to use the veriff app to complete identification.

As bad as it sounds, I am fortunate enough to not have a computer with a webcam or a new phone.

So I go to the help center chat and addressed my issue to a few agents regarding the matter. The first agent transferred me to the banking agent then that one transferred me to the general agent. So then I proceed to call them on the phone, and the agent there looked up my account on my behalf and stated there are no problems with my account. Turned out the banking agent may be right when she believed the email is a phishing attempt.

For anyone else using square, if you get many emails asking you to reverify your identity, especially if you haven't received such emails in a long time and especially if you haven't shared your account with other users, then give them a phone call and the matter is usually solved by that point.

The email is shown below:

Here's the text version:

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Reverify your identity to continue processing payments.

To comply with a recent change in legal requirements for processing payments with Square, you must reverify your identity. Verify your identity using the button below or go to your notifications in your Square Dashboard.

You need to complete this by December 31, 2024, to continue processing payments, or your business will be deactivated. Please note that you should not respond to this email with your information; instead, follow the steps outlined below.

We need one of the following government-issued documents to verify your identity:

Passport

Provincial / Territorial ID Card

Driver’s License

Residence Permit

By clicking on “Complete verification” below, you consent to providing your ID scan and biometric data to Veriff, our vendor, to verify your identity using facial recognition technology. Learn more in Veriff's Privacy Policy. Alternatively, you may also reach out to our Customer Success team to request a manual review here.

Thanks,
The Square Team

Square Canada, Inc.
5000 Yonge Street, Suite 1501
Toronto, ON M2N 7E9 Canada

Square Privacy Policy

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I put this email in text format so it gets exposed to search engines as a way to try to keep potential email hackers off of financial platforms such as this one.

[ryanwanner]

Hello @osd !

Great catch! Spoofing emails have been an issue off and on over the years and I'm glad you caught it before giving up any information.

My biggest recommendation with any Square emails that ask for information: do not click on any links in the email: log into your Dashboard. If there is an actual issue with your account, you will be alerted either with a popup or through the notifications area in the upper right.

Also, be sure to forward the suspect email to spoof [at] squareup [dot] com so they can look into it.

[osd]

Looks like the madness didnt end. I got a text to a number I have (that I don't have connected to my square account) from phone number 249-559-0099 asking me to verify my account. I login to my dashboard and the alert is there asking me to verify. when I click on it, I'm taken to a veriff page where they want me to do a biometric scan of my face to prove I'm me.

So I call again and now agent 5 believes something about my account is "frozen" (even though I got no direct notice of that by email or dashboard), then I get passed to agent 6 who says they're having technical difficulties at their end, so now I'm hoping they call back soon.

I wonder if their computers are failing. why do I say that? because my website was down for a week due to aging hardware. As soon as the hard drive was moved from a faulty to a new computer, everything worked again.

[frances_a · Accepted solution]

Hello @osd & @ryanwanner 👋

This email -if it came from a trusted Square email address, ending with @squareup.com- is actually legit. 

There is a small subset of Sellers in Canada needing to re-verify some information, due to new legal requirements in that country.

While we do our best to ensure we collect all the information the law requires of businesses using Square during the onboarding process, this is a new requirement, and some Sellers need to provide identity information to comply with the new KYC/KYB requirements for Money Services Businesses (MSBs).

Since this is not affecting many Sellers, it's possible the agents you spoke to were confused about what was being requested of you, specially because the email does use terms like "verification" or "continue processing payments", which are commonly used when an account is frozen (this simply means we need additional information about the business or a specific transaction processed)

In this case, your account is currently in good standing (unless otherwise notified to you), but if the required information is not received by the end of the year, we will proceed to deactivate the account, as it would no longer comply with legal requirements. 

As for receiving a text, Square wouldn't be able to text a phone number unless it was previously shared with us. Most Square accounts list two separate phone numbers: one that was used to activate the account and a business phone, which some Sellers elect to make public.

Is it possible the phone number that received the text was used during the sign-up process?

Hopefully this helps clarify. 

Thank you.