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What does the "Invalid location" error mean? Is it because I'm outside the US?

I am traveling out of the US. I need to key in a sale but it is erroring out saying "invalid location"
Is this because I am out of the US or because the zip code is invalid?

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Best Answer

Great question. You are only permitted to accept payments within your country of activation so if you created your account in the U.S., you will need to be physically located in the U.S. To process payments. 

 

You can run the sale when you're back on U.S. soil, or have someone back in the states manually enter it for you.

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Yes, but if you have Android, you can download fake gps,and put any  location in the US and press play, then open the square app and try again and as far as its concerned, you are in the US. If iPhones can fake a location, it should work as well.

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Square Community Moderator

Hi @ibay770

 

As mentioned in previous posts above, spoofing or faking geolocation violates Square's Terms of Service.

 

You're only able to accept payments within the country that you activated your account. 

 

 

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This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Invalid location

 

Why does my card reader keep telling me invalid location?

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Super Seller

well, let's start with the obvious.

 

1. where are you?  are you inside the country that you registered your Square account with?  If you created a USA Square account it can only be used within the GPS location of the united states.

 

2.  What hardware do you have?  and where did you buy it?  The contactless chip readers are county specific, i.e. the Canadian one won't work with an American account and vice versa.

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Hi all,

 

I'm long time user of square, I have it installed on several devices under just one account,

 

I'm having this error on just one device, be tried everything short of uninstalling, does anyone have any other ideas/suggestions?

 

I'm in Australia, not traveling have never traveled with my business

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Square Community Moderator

Hi @Stevebarrel! Welcome to the Community.

 

Is your account registered under an Australian account and the hardware purchased from Australia as well? 

Ashley C
Community Moderator, Square
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I've run into this problem as well, however, I also found a workaround that doesn't seem to have any of the geographic restrictions that we've been told in this thread that are set by card issuers.

 

It's simply this: use the virtual terminal in your Square account rather than the POS app. I'm in France, my Square account is in the UK. I can process payments from France just fine using the virtual terminal, but I get the "invalid location" error if I use the POS app, using exactly the same (UK) card.

 

If this was indeed meant to be a geographic restriction, then either it's not true, or Square has bugs relating to its enforcement...

 

It doesn't solve everything though – it's much more difficult to deal with second factors, it's not easy for end-users to access, misses out on POS features, and it also seems to not trigger some API callbacks and other API elements. In this case it's these that are the killer for me.

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With the Virtual Terminal you are not physically swiping the card, but rather entering the card info manually. Big difference. The geo location is not that hard to bypass, but it has one major flaw doing so. If a card holder has not setup traveling notes the transaction will most likely decline, as the card holder is in location A, and the card appears to be in location B. Also, a lot of banks nowadays have a system that uses the card holder’s phone location and compares it to the location where the card is swiped. That will not match if the merchant has a spoofed location. It will most likely result in a card block. As I said before, geo spoofing is possible and can make Square work for that reason. But other factors most likely will result in declined transactions, so in the end it won’t work. “It works, but it doesn’t” would be the poetical term. 

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The best way to use Square outside the US is login to your account and either use the Virtual Terminal to process on the spot, or send an invoice and have the customer pay online. Geo spoofing is possible, but not the way to go...

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This is a great solution. Thank you. Even my VPN didn't work with the app, but this did. 

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Both 'Virtual Terminal' and 'Send Invoice Link' are not limited by a geolocation, and were never stated as such. So in that sense it is not a hack or bypass, but rather a method of doing so.

I wrote on various posts that you can geo-spoof, but doing so will trigger other issues that will not make it work in the end.

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I’m originally from Guam (United States Territory). I signed up using a family members address in AK because I stayed in AK for a little bit. I moved back to Guam and tried to make a sale using Square, but it’s giving me an “Invalid Location” error every time I swipe a customers card. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem?

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Alumni

Hey @JV86 - George can fill you in on what's happening on this thread I moved you to. Check it out above.

Justin
Community Moderator, Square
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