Has anyone had a problem using the Square to accept the new credit cards that are being issued that contains some sort of chip in them?
My wife and I were issued new replacement credit cards containing these chips and they apparently cannot be swiped with the Square. The information has to be manually entered...I emailed square to ask about this but have not had a response and a phone # for Square seems to be non-existent or virtually impossible to find if it does exist.
Entering credit card info manually will get the job done but it sure ain't convenient.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Replies
The magnetic strip on a card with an inserted chip seems to be a little bit thicker than the other cards we have. I have been experimenting by swiping my own card with both the Square and the Intuit readers.
After about 6 or so swipes the card swipe went through and was accepted by both the Square and the Intuit readers...so obviously a pin or a signature is not required. I am not sure if it the increased thickness of the card that cause the problem but I do know that when I do use my other credit card that has no chip the transaction works on the first try with both readers.
Here's some info on the chip cards.
"...Smart Chip is a credit card technology where cards are embedded with chips and a cardholder must put in their pin or sign for each transaction to be approved. With “chip & pin” especially, this is an ultra-secure method that makes it much harder for credit card hackers and fraudsters to steal from consumers since, rather than just stealing the information contained in a card’s magnetic strip, they’d have to know the carrier’s pin number as well. The other type of chip card, “chip & signature,” function more like US swipe cards, only they can be used with portable electronic readers that require you to insert the card rather than swipe it, and then sign for it as you would with a regular old swipe card. Although chip & pins are prevalent in Europe, the cards issued in the US with chips tend to be overwhelmingly chip & signature, so you might still have some issues using them at certain merchants, but having a chip at all can be a big help when using cards at ticket machines or other vendors that require a chip of some sort..."
This may be a problem for us. These cards will evidently work at the gas station where the card is inserted, but not swiped on our equipment.