Technical problems were reported with the Discover credit card brand and some other financial service brands, such as Visa and Square by Block, Inc. on Monday, February 6, 2023. Customers calling the Discover’s toll free help line were faced with either no answer, a busy signal, or a recorded message that stated Discover was having technical difficulties, and that customers should call back later.
Some customers reported Monday on Downdetector.com that their Discover credit cards were being declined. However, Discover wasn’t the only financial service with issues. Some business customers and retail customers in the grand sum of all financial services with transaction issues, reported being unable to access their money (in debit card accounts), being overcharged by multiple transactions, or being affected as a business when their goods or services were automatically delivered without their transactions being recorded. Many people were frustrated by remedy uncertainty, or by the awareness that there would be long delays before false transactions or missing transactions were going to be corrected.
According to reports on Downdetector.com regarding Discover card service, there was a slight spike in the volume of reported outages about 10:30 a.m. CT, February 6, 2023. Then a larger volume spike began about 12:46 p.m. CT. Discover customers began reporting problems with their physical Discover cards, the website, the app, and the 800 customer service phone line.
Downdetector.com (Discover) indicated most reported problems were from the App (43%), the website (38%), and the Login (19%).
One person reported their Discover card was declined at a bakery and a Publix grocer.
Another person reported sending multiple payments after thinking the payments didn’t go through. The person wrote that later the payment and overpayments went through.
Another person reported that Aldi was having EFT and Discover card issues.
Messages from customers on Discover’s Facebook page were complaining of services not working as early as Sunday, February 5, 2023. A reply from Discover on Facebook stated, “The Account Center on both the website and app are currently down for maintenance. We do not have an ETA on when they will be back up. Please try logging in again later.”
Discover appeared to be back to normal about 9:00 p.m., according to Downdetector.com. A banner alert regarding delays from technical difficulties was removed from the Discover card website Monday evening. The volume of problems reported on Downdetector.com peaked from 2:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Monday, February 6, 2023.
Problems with Visa were also reported beginning about 1:30 p.m. Monday. The volume of reported problems peaked at about 3:45 p.m.
The financial service Square was also affected by reported outages on Downdetector.com beginning around 2:00 p.m. Monday and peaked from about 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Business customers of Square reported that their customer payments were declined. One business customer reported that transactions processed offline were getting declined, but that customers were receiving their products anyway. Another business customer said that one of their retail customers got charged twice, and the retail customer’s wife was also charged, but that the three transactions did not show up on the business customer’s side.
Square is a financial services platform developed by Block, Inc. that primarily serves small-and medium-size businesses. Square allows these businesses to accept credit card payments as a point-of-sale system, using tablet computers as mobile payment checkout registers with a built-in swipe, chip, and contactless reader.
Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) is an American multinational technology conglomerate founded in 2009 by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. The service began operating in 2010.
H&R Block sued Block, Inc. after Square’s name change and won, but a U.S. appeals court on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 reversed a judge’s order that barred Block Inc, formerly Square, from using its name in conjunction with its tax-preparation app during a trademark dispute with H&R Block Inc.
The evidence of consumer confusion was not strong enough to support a federal judge’s preliminary order to stop Block Inc from using “Block” in connection with Cash App Taxes, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday, January 24, 2023.
Block, Inc. has no physical headquarters as of 2021, and operates a “distributed work model” according to their SEC Form 10-K.
Discover Financial headquarters is in Riverwoods, Illinois.
Visa headquarters is in San Francisco, California.
A widespread credit-card payment outage also occurred in February 2021, which was explained early as a problem with Internet connectivity at First Data/Fiserv, which is one of the largest credit card payment processing systems in the United States.
Initially, there was no explanation for the February outage in 2023.
Get updates from The Cardinal ALL NEWS FEEDS on Facebook. Just ‘LIKE’ the ‘Arlington Cardinal Page (become a fan of our page). The updates cover all posts and sub-category posts from The Cardinal — Arlingtoncardinal.com. You can also limit feeds to specific categories. See all of The Cardinal Facebook fan pages at Arlingtoncardinal.com/about/facebook …
Help fund The Cardinal Arlingtoncardinal.com/sponsor