Does my chip reader need replacing?

[willbrokaw]

Hello, Square Community.

Our business does seasonal retail; we're currently on our off season. I received the chip reader update notice email from square so I paired our charged reader to our phone in order to complete it.

While our phone indicated a successful pairing, no update seemed to take place nor did the reader seem to be read; insertions of various credit cards didn't facilitate transactions on our phone. We followed up by testing the magnetic strip reader on the same phone and this was successful. 

Our chip reader is quite new and was working perfectly through completion our retail season. Is there any hope of reviving this chip reader? Do we need to replace it?

Thanks!

Will

[Joe]

Hi there, @willbrokaw! Thanks for reaching out here. Welcome to the Seller Community! We are happy to have you.

Sorry to hear that you've been having trouble with your reader - they can definitely be tricky, especially if there is a recent or pending update involved. I believe I can provide a bit of clarity here.

As you mentioned in your post, we did push out a recent firmware update for the Contactless & Chip Card reader over the weekend. Our email notification stated that this update may take up to 20 minutes, but often these updates will process so quickly that they will complete without the Merchant knowing. So it is possible that your reader may have processed the update already, however the fact that payments are not completing is still concerning.

Are there any pending software updates available for either your device or the Square application itself? It's possible for card reader functionality to deprecate if your device is running an expired software.These updates would be separate from the firmware update. If everything is up to date, I would try these troubleshooting steps as a next step - they've proven very useful to me when I have reader trouble. 

If you are still having trouble after walking through these steps, I would recommend reaching out to our Support Team. They will help in determining if there is an underlying issue with your reader and assist in filing a warranty if necessary.

I hope all of this information is helpful! Please don't hesitate to reach out with any more questions. We are here to help! 

[willbrokaw]

Thanks, Joe.

I will try the trouble shooting guide once my unit is completely charged.

Thanks again!

Will