Many Square payment systems failed on Friday due to a software bug.
Small businesses can’t determine if Square is less reliable than bank terminals.
The Reserve Bank wants Square to report on outages, but needs new powers.
Square’s day-long payment system outage has attracted the attention of the Reserve Bank, which is considering whether the Block-owned company should be forced to start disclosing when its technology goes down, so small businesses can compare its reliability against banks’ terminal offerings.
Square suffered widespread processing problems on Friday that prevented thousands of Australian small businesses from accepting card payments. This was caused by an internal software update that stopped its systems communicating, the US-based company told customers in an email on Monday.
Loading...
James Eyers writes on banking, payments and fintech. He is a former legal and investment banking editor at the AFR, has degrees in commerce and law from UNSW, and is co-author of Buy now, pay later: The extraordinary story of Afterpay Connect with James on Twitter. Email James at jeyers@afr.com.au
