Payment Processors · reliability comparison
PayPal vs Square Payments: which is more reliable? (2026)
PayPal is more reliable than Square Payments, scoring 80.0 vs 53.3 out of 100. Over the last 90 days PayPal reported 3 incidents and Square Payments reported 12, with effective uptime of 99.92% and 98.93% respectively. PayPal resolves incidents faster on average (3h 3m).
Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score
| Metric | PayPal | Square Payments |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability score | 80.0 | 53.3 |
| Rank (payment processors) | #7 | #10 |
| Uptime (90 days) | 99.92% | 98.93% |
| Incidents (90 days) | 3 | 12 |
| Partial / major outages | 0 | 0 |
| Avg time to resolve | 3h 3m | 12h 49m |
| Outages we detected | 1 | 0 |
| Transparency score | 50/100 | 100/100 |
Where PayPal and Square Payments differ
- Square Payments reported 4× as many incidents as PayPal over the last 90 days (12 vs 3).
- PayPal fixes problems faster: 3h 3m on average, against 12h 49m for Square Payments (4.2× quicker).
- PayPal's longest incident on record lasted 4h 20m (Oct 22, 2026); Square Payments's lasted 17h 43m (Apr 30, 2026).
- Our own probes detected 1 outage at PayPal and 0 at Square Payments, of which 0 and 0 respectively were acknowledged on their status pages.
90-day uptime
PayPal
Square Payments
- No incidents
- Degraded
- Partial outage
- Major outage
- No data
Recent PayPal incidents
- Degraded performanceOct 22, 2026 · resolved in 4h 20m
Detected Resolved: Impact to Online Checkout (PP-LIVE-110330)
Affected: Online Checkout
- MaintenanceOct 16, 2026 · resolved in 3h
Initial Notification: PayPal Live Site Maintenance (PP-LIVE-110012)
Affected: Retail Checkout > Mobile In-Store, Retail Checkout > PayPal Here, Online Checkout > Payments Standard (WPS), Online Checkout > Express Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Pay with Venmo, Hyperwallet > Payouts Processing and Network +1 more
- Degraded performanceOct 11, 2026 · resolved in 3h 39m
Impact to BNPL (Pay Later) authorizations (PP-LIVE-110179)
Affected: REST APIs > Orders, Online Checkout > PayPal Complete Payments (PPCP) - Payment Service
- MaintenanceOct 9, 2026 · resolved in 3h 30m
Initial Notification: PayPal Live Site Maintenance (PP-LIVE-110005)
Affected: Retail Checkout > Mobile In-Store, Online Checkout > Payments Standard (WPS), Online Checkout > Express Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Pay with Venmo, Homepage > PayPal Homepage, Account > Seller Onboarding +1 more
- MaintenanceOct 2, 2026 · resolved in 3h 30m
Initial Notification: PayPal Live Site Maintenance (PP-LIVE-109883)
Affected: Retail Checkout > Mobile In-Store, Retail Checkout > PayPal Here, Online Checkout > Payments Standard (WPS), Online Checkout > Express Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Pay with Venmo, Hyperwallet > Payouts Processing and Network +1 more
- MaintenanceSep 25, 2026 · resolved in 3h 30m
Affected: Retail Checkout > Mobile In-Store, Retail Checkout > PayPal Here, Online Checkout > Payments Standard (WPS), Online Checkout > Express Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Pay with Venmo, Hyperwallet > Payouts Processing and Network +1 more
Recent Square Payments incidents
- Degraded performanceSep 27, 2026 · resolved in 4h 25m
- Degraded performanceSep 24, 2026 · resolved in 12m
- Degraded performanceSep 21, 2026 · resolved in 2d 4h
- Degraded performanceSep 18, 2026 · resolved in 3h 54m
- Degraded performanceSep 18, 2026 · resolved in 15h 7m
- Degraded performanceSep 16, 2026 · resolved in 34m