Jeff Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images fileIt was around 2 p.m. Thursday when Adam Blackbill realized he wasn't getting sales reports from his three ice cream shops.
Urban Churn, which sells all-natural and gourmet ice cream in unusual flavors like sauerkraut or roasted cricket, was one of a slew of small businesses that found themselves thrown into chaos after Square and Cash App, two financial services platforms run by Block, sustained an outage. That caused problems processing sales and even stopped employees from clocking in and out of their shifts.
"People don’t carry cash anymore, so we had a bunch of people just leave without buying anything," Coleman said."People don’t carry cash and people don’t want to take 10-15 minutes to drive to the ATM." Beyond the lost money, users told NBC News they are frustrated that Square didn’t reach out to tell them what was wrong. Instead, many of them found out on X, formerly Twitter.
“I didn’t get email or any notification from Square that they were the ones having problems. That’s kind of a bummer,” said Vincent Shay, the owner of the Mermaid Market on Port San Luis Beach in Avila Harbor, California.