Square, the digital payments company that handles millions of transactions for consumers, sometimes sends the receipts to the wrong people, a situation chronicled in a new Wall Street Journal report.
According to the report, citing emails seen by the paper, Square has erroneously sent receipts documenting transactions ranging from a simple cup of coffee to more significant purchases. One customer was trying to keep an upcoming divorce under wraps when the receipt for the attorney was mistakenly sent to a friend. Square told the woman the mistake occurred because her friend’s email address was used in the past to get a copy of a receipt from an earlier purchase from a different vendor.
“While receipts received by the wrong person are incredibly rare, even one is a really bad experience,” a Square spokesman said in the report. “We’ve already made a number of changes to the experience, resulting in a more than 50 percent decrease in customer issues in one year, and we have more improvements in the works.”
The spokesman went on to say that digital receipts can be received by the incorrect person for different reasons, such as if customers share a credit card number or the receipt goes to a recycled mobile phone. User error was also cited.
The paper noted that many of the complaints focused on receipts going to someone else came when a credit card was shared between a husband and wife. For example, a husband could sign up for Square digital receipt program and get receipts every time his wife makes a purchase with the shared card at any Square vendor.
