Anyone tried this and been successful? We have tried swiping at 3 separate locations so far and no dice
Using Pub & Bar Gift Cards on Squareup Terminals
bemyally on 07/01/2023 - 11:36
Last edited 07/01/2023 - 14:15 by 1 other user
Last edited 07/01/2023 - 14:15 by 1 other user
Comments
I see, thanks for this! I was thinking that if we tried it at 3 terminals and it didn’t work then either Square would not accept it or there was something wrong with the card
I am not sure whether you figured out what actually caused your issues, but Square is actually to blame.
It turns out that Square refuses to process any payments on the eftpos network if you swipe a card, because Square believes all eftpos cards are issued with a chip (which is a lie) and that swipe payments are not very secure. If you insert or tap a card, it can be processed through the eftpos network (which is not really helpful for physical Pub & Bar gift cards).
The workaround for using physical Pub & Bar gift cards at a Square terminal is to exchange them for the digital version… except the digital version runs on the Mastercard network and therefore you would need to pay any surcharge for payments through the Mastercard network.
I thought Squarespace was a website builder, not an EFTPOS terminal provider.
I hope you realise that is a vague statement, because there are many reasons the gift card was declined. For example:
The gift card's magstripe is damaged.
The magstripe readers on the EFTPOS terminals are faulty.
The gift card was not swiped correctly on the EFTPOS terminal.
The merchants you visited are not using a Merchant Category Code permitted on the Pub & Bar gift card.
The merchant's payment provider has blocked payments from a prepaid EFTPOS gift card. (I managed to have a restaurant do this late last year…)
The gift card issuer was offline when you attempted payment, meaning it was unable to communicate with the merchant's payment provider to complete the transaction before the transaction timed out.
And just in case you were wondering, I was with a friend of mine a couple of months ago for dinner, and they used a Pub & Bar gift card for payment at a restaurant with a Square and had no issues. Well, I didn't see the transaction happen, but they said it worked.
If you would rather use the Pub & Bar gift card stored on Apple Pay, Google Wallet and Samsung Pay, go to this webpage, scroll down to the section where it says Pay safer and faster using your mobile wallet and then follow the prompts.
Keep in mind that the digital gift card is a Mastercard, so if a merchant levies a surcharge for Mastercard payments, you will need to pay a surcharge too.