On February 26, 2025, Square experienced a widespread outage that disrupted payment processing for businesses across North America and beyond. The outage lasted for approximately two to three hours, leaving merchants unable to accept card transactions and frustrating thousands of customers.
While Square acknowledged the issue on its official status page at 3:32 PM ET, StatusGator’s Early Warning Signals detected and alerted users about the outage earlier, 5 minutes before Square confirmed the disruption.
The Importance of Early Outage Detection
For IT teams and businesses that rely on Square, waiting for an official acknowledgment can mean lost transaction revenue and major disruptions. StatusGator’s Early Warning Signals provide proactive alerts by detecting outages based on real-time reports and service anomalies, giving teams a head start in responding.
Timeline of the Square Outage
- 3:24 PM ET: First Signs of Trouble
- The first report of Square issues was recorded at 3:24 PM ET. Users across the U.S. and internationally began experiencing failed transactions, system errors, problems with the Square reader, and intermittent service disruptions. Square’s status page continues to say that all systems were operational.
- 3:27 PM ET: Outage Reports Surge, StatusGator Notifies Customers
- By 3:27 PM ET, businesses relying on Square started noticing widespread failures in payment processing. Reports flooded in from multiple regions, with common complaints including “Not processing payments” and “Internal server issues.” At the same time, StatusGator’s Early Warning Signals detected the outage and sent alerts to its customers, notifying IT teams before Square’s official acknowledgment.
- 3:32 PM ET: Square Officially Acknowledges the Outage
- Square updated its status page at 3:32 PM ET, confirming that multiple Square services were down. Square’s status page advised users to enable Offline Mode, a feature that allows limited transactions to be stored and processed once connectivity is restored.
- 3:46 PM ET: Peak of Outage Reports
- The outage reached its peak at 3:46 PM ET, with the highest volume of user reports confirming connection failures. Businesses were widely affected, with restaurants, coffee shops, and retail stores unable to process card payments or accept payments.
- 5:10 PM ET: Square Implements a Fix
- Square reported that a fix had been implemented by 5:10 PM ET. Many merchants began seeing restored functionality, though some continued to report problems with Square readers, terminals and other Square resources.
- 5:41 PM ET: Last Reports of Issues
- StatusGator data shows that businesses were still reporting lingering payment issues and website outages as late as 5:41 PM ET, even after Square announced its fix.
- 6:00 PM ET: Full Recovery
- By 6:00 PM ET, Square marked the incident as resolved, with all Square resources and systems returning to normal operation.
How IT Teams Can Stay Ahead of Outages
Waiting for a service provider’s acknowledgment during an outage can leave businesses scrambling. StatusGator’s Early Warning Signals ensure IT teams get notified before the official acknowledgment, allowing them to proactively mitigate disruptions.
What Makes StatusGator Different?
When outages strike, many business scramble to understand if the outage affects everyone or just them. They may start searching on Google or turn to services like Downdetector. But there’s a better way than Downdetector to learn about outages: StatusGator.
- Detects outages at Square and more than 5,000 other apps — often before the official confirmation.
- Aggregates status page data across thousands of businesses.
- Provides instant notifications via email, Slack, Teams, and more.
- Reduces downtime by giving IT teams a head start.
Learn more about Early Warning Signals and how to protect your business from future outages.
Final Thoughts
The February 2025 Square outage was a major disruption, but it reinforced the importance of proactive outage monitoring. IT teams and business owners who rely on Square and other cloud apps can avoid being caught off guard by using tools like StatusGator to catch and respond to outages before they escalate.
Want to ensure your business never gets blindsided by an outage again? Try StatusGator today and get ahead of the next service disruption.
