At a glance
Percentage of attempted Square payments that succeeded. Card-present (POS chip + tap) success rates are very high (typically 98, 99.5%). Card-not-present (Square Online + Tap to Pay phone-typed) is more like 92, 96%. Cash App Pay is somewhere in between (95, 98%) because the buyer-side wallet handles auth.
| What it counts | COUNT(status = COMPLETED) / COUNT(status IN (COMPLETED, FAILED, CANCELED)) * 100. APPROVED (auth-only, not yet captured) excluded from both. |
| Currency | Currency-neutral (rate, not amount). |
| Channel split | POS card-present near-universally succeeds; online lower; the blended figure depends heavily on channel mix. |
| Cash transactions | Counted as success (cash is always “successful” by definition). Cash inclusion inflates the blended success rate slightly. |
| 3DS abandons | A Square Online checkout where the customer abandoned the 3DS challenge counts as CANCELED, lowering success rate. |
| Time window | 7D vsP. |
| Alert trigger | <92% absolute, OR -3pp week-over-week. Sentiment gauge: good >=95, warn <90. |
| Roles | owner, finance, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Square data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
7-day window, blended across channels:| Channel | Successful | Failed | Cancelled | Success rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| POS chip + tap | 798 | 6 | 2 | 798 / 806 = 99.0% |
| Cash drawer | 270 | 0 | 0 | 100% |
| Square Online | 142 | 18 | 5 | 142 / 165 = 86.1% |
| Cash App Pay | 21 | 1 | 0 | 95.5% |
| POS Apple/Google Pay | 56 | 1 | 0 | 98.2% |
- Online success rate at 86% is concerning. Below the 92% alert threshold. Open
squ_top_decline_reasonsto see whether it’sINSUFFICIENT_FUNDS,CARD_DECLINEDgeneric, orCVV_FAILURE. If the cancel rate (5 / 165 = 3%) is dominated by 3DS abandons, the fix is checkout UX. Track viasqu_threedsecure_abandon_rate. - POS chip + tap at 99% is excellent. Anything in 98, 99.5% range on card-present is healthy. <97% on POS suggests terminal connectivity or chip-reader hardware fault.
- Cash inflates the blended figure. Removing cash gives 1,017 success out of 1,050 = 96.9%, the more useful “card success” rate.
- Cash App Pay at 95.5%. Block has high incentive to keep the buyer-side flow smooth; declines are typically insufficient-balance on the Cash App account.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair |
|---|---|
squ_decline_rate | The complement (decline = 100 - success - cancel). |
squ_top_decline_reasons | The breakdown when this rate drops. |
squ_threedsecure_abandon_rate | The cancel-side companion (online only). |
squ_top_payment_methods | Tender mix shift moves this number. |
Stripe stripe_payment_success_rate / Viva viv_success_rate | Cross-PSP comparison. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in the Square Dashboard:Reports → Sales → Sales Summary has tiles for “Sold” vs “Failed”. Dashboard does not natively surface a “success rate” KPI; you compute it from the raw counts.Why our number may differ:
| Reason | Direction |
|---|---|
| Cash inclusion | Ours higher (cash is always success) |
| Time zone | Boundary days |
| Cancelled vs Failed taxonomy | Slight; both excluded from numerator |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
“My online success rate dropped overnight, where to start?” Opensqu_top_decline_reasons first. Most overnight drops are issuer-side (bank fraud-filter triggered for one BIN range) or 3DS-config (a recent Square Online upgrade changed the challenge flow).
“Why is POS so much higher than online?”
Card-present has chip + PIN local verification; the issuer auth is mostly procedural. Online (CNP) has the issuer + 3DS + Square Risk all evaluating; any of them can decline. The 6, 12 percentage point gap is universal.
“Cash App Pay declines, what causes them?”
Insufficient Cash App balance, expired linked card on the Cash App side, or Block’s risk engine declining the funding source. Merchants don’t see the underlying reason (Block protects buyer privacy).
“Tap to Pay on iPhone success rate?”
Same as POS chip + tap, near 99%. The hardware-vs-software difference doesn’t materially change auth outcomes.
“My subscription rebills are the bulk of my failures, normal?”
Yes. Card-on-file rebills decline for expired_card (~30% of subscription declines), insufficient_funds (~25%), and do_not_honor (~15%). Square Subscriptions has a built-in retry schedule.
“Multi-currency, does this work?”
Yes; rate is currency-neutral.
“Time-zone shift on the 7D window?”
Boundary days shift by your location’s offset from UTC. For most US merchants this means the rate may be 0.1, 0.3pp different from a Square Dashboard equivalent on the latest day.
“Why is my Square Online conversion lower than Shopify with Stripe?”
Square Online’s checkout is built for retail-extension stores (single-product impulse, brick-and-mortar with online add-on); Shopify with Stripe is built for ecom-first. The two flows have different optimisations; different success rates are normal.