On October 27, from 4:07–4:59 p.m. PT, some Square sellers experienced delays in orders and order updates syncing across devices, including orders appearing on kitchen displays. The disruption affected sellers globally. A software configuration change triggered a surge in background syncing activity, which temporarily impacted systems responsible for keeping order information up to date. We restored service by temporarily pausing the backlog queue activity, increasing processing capacity and then we actively managed the remaining backlog queues until they were cleared.

Our engineering follow-up is focused on strengthening controls on bulk order-data syncing and improving how our systems manage sudden increases in demand, to reduce the risk of this activity disrupting live order delivery. 

We apologize for the disruption to your business and any frustration this caused with your team.