There are quite a few Only 1 Visa Gift cards I have and I prefer them in cash so from research, I supposed Square would be suitable. All the gift cards were of course genuine bought from the store. So I start transferring cards into Square. All successfully went through. I later got and email notifying me that my account will be deactivated due to excessive amounts of prepaid cards! The deposited amounts are being held on Square, not transferred into my bank account. I am not sure what to do now.
Square Up Account Deactivated from Transferring Gift Cards into Bank Account
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Isn't Square meant for business not personal? If they see this method of transferring, how will they respond? I will soon, I am also seeing what my options are prior to calling them.
I suspect only they know what the real options are.
And yeah I'm pretty sure they are for business use only. Did you have to enter an ABN when signing up?
No, no need.
How many cards we are talking about?
So you were cashing out prepaid gift cards via Square and you have not processed any other credit card payment?could have been pinged by their anti money laundering monitoring.
Just spend them at Coles or Woolworths for full value.
It is costing you the merchant fee in using your own card acceptance facility.
That’s a violation of the payment processing agreement, which is why your account got canned. This is literally the first term in the Commercial Entity Agreement which you apparently did not read:
Seller shall not submit any Transaction that is not a bona fide Transaction. A “bona fide” Transaction means a Transaction that is (i) between the Seller and its Customer, (ii) for the sale of goods and/or services (or a refund for such a sale) that are Seller’s property or that Seller has the legal right to sell, (iii) submitted on behalf of Seller (and not on behalf of any third party) and (iv) legal, authorised by the Customer, non-fraudulent or otherwise damaging to the Card Brand(s) and is, to the Seller’s knowledge, enforceable, collectible and in full compliance with this Agreement, applicable Law and Card Brand Rules.
And hey, a little further down:
Seller shall not disburse or advance any cash to a Customer (except as authorised by the Card Brand Rules) or to itself or any of its representatives, agents or employees in connection with a Transaction, nor shall Seller accept payment for effecting credits or issuing refunds to a Customer.
You done messed up. One of the cardinal rules of merchant processing is never process cards for yourself. Sure the Only1 gift cards can’t be identified by Square as yours, but if your only transactions are for very specific amounts off those gift cards, they’re not stupid - their anti-fraud systems will cut you off in a heartbeat.
So can op get the money back now?
They may do one of two things: hold the balance for up to six months as reserve in case of fraud, or refund to the originating cards.
square are a very difficult bunch be wary of them. they freeze accounts very easily, they closed my account for doing just a couple of family amex $1 transactions, then wanted me to submit invoices as proof . i just waited it out about 3 months before the mongrels released my funds and deposited it into my business account.
Then have you thought of alternatives?
PeeDee, There is no alternative for you you're not going to be able to use another provider like square to do what you want that's not what these payment processing platforms are for.
You may be able to do what you want using revolut as they will allow you to load money using a debit card into their platform. But I'd always be expecting that you're going to possibly trip some money laundering antifraud mechanisms.
They’re not mongrels for enforcing the terms of service you didn’t read. That’s on you.
Amex especially are very aggressive about no related party transactions.
Square are also not within the jurisdiction of the Financial Complaints Authority and their T&Cs are subject to a private arbitration clause, so it is all setup very cleverly to make it difficult to pursue any recourse against them.
Just wait the 3 months for them to release the funds and move on.
So call them and see what your options are.