How do I know if Stripe, Square or PayPal is down?

Check the vendor's status page and look at the pattern: many cards from different banks failing at the same time suggests a platform problem. A single customer's card declining while others succeed is almost always the card issuer.

What does 'do not honour' mean?

The customer's bank declined the payment without giving a specific reason. The customer needs to contact their bank or use another card; retrying the same card repeatedly can trigger more fraud blocks.

Can I keep taking card payments during an outage?

Some platforms support offline payments on their card readers, with limits. Offline payments carry the risk that a card declines later, so set a sensible limit and read the vendor's terms before you rely on it.

Why are my Xero or QuickBooks bank feeds not updating?

Bank feeds depend on the connection between the accounting app and your bank, which can expire or need re-authorising. Check the bank connection status in the app before assuming an outage.

Home / Problems / Payments & accounting

Problem guide · 6 fix-it guides · Last reviewed 6 Oct 2026 · By Harry

Payments, checkout and accounting problems (Stripe, Square, PayPal, Shopify, Xero, QuickBooks)

Cards declining at the till or checkout, PayPal errors, reader offline, Xero or QuickBooks down? Separate platform incidents from bank and setup faults.

When payments fail, money is walking out of the door, so the pressure to call it an outage is enormous. Most of the time it is not. The vast majority of declines are decided by the customer's card issuer (insufficient funds, a fraud rule, a 3-D Secure check that did not complete) and the payment platform is simply passing that answer on. A card reader showing offline is usually the shop's Wi-Fi or network, not the global payments service.

Platform incidents do happen, and they look different: lots of cards from different banks failing in the same minute, the dashboard itself slow or erroring, and an incident on the vendor's status page. Accounting apps such as Xero and QuickBooks Online sit in the same small-business toolkit and fail in similar ways: the browser, the sign-in or a bank-feed connection is more often the cause than the platform. The checks below tell you which world you are in.

Which guide fits your symptom?

Card payments declining

Card reader offline

Stripe card reader offline: outage or the till Wi-Fi?A Stripe Terminal card reader shows offline at the counter.

Accounting apps

Also worth a look

These guides live under another problem type but often turn up with this symptom.

Related status pages

Live vendor status, checked every five minutes. If the vendor has posted an incident, the guides above become a waiting game rather than a fix.

FAQ

How do I know if Stripe, Square or PayPal is down?: Check the vendor's status page and look at the pattern: many cards from different banks failing at the same time suggests a platform problem. A single customer's card declining while others succeed is almost always the card issuer.
What does 'do not honour' mean?: The customer's bank declined the payment without giving a specific reason. The customer needs to contact their bank or use another card; retrying the same card repeatedly can trigger more fraud blocks.
Can I keep taking card payments during an outage?: Some platforms support offline payments on their card readers, with limits. Offline payments carry the risk that a card declines later, so set a sensible limit and read the vendor's terms before you rely on it.
Why are my Xero or QuickBooks bank feeds not updating?: Bank feeds depend on the connection between the accounting app and your bank, which can expire or need re-authorising. Check the bank connection status in the app before assuming an outage.