Payment Processors · reliability comparison
Shift4 Payments vs Square Payments: which is more reliable? (2026)
Shift4 Payments is more reliable than Square Payments, scoring 57.8 vs 53.3 out of 100. Over the last 90 days Shift4 Payments reported 5 incidents and Square Payments reported 12, with effective uptime of 99.36% and 98.93% respectively. Square Payments resolves incidents faster on average (12h 49m).
Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score
| Metric | Shift4 Payments | Square Payments |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability score | 57.8 | 53.3 |
| Rank (payment processors) | #8 | #10 |
| Uptime (90 days) | 99.36% | 98.93% |
| Incidents (90 days) | 5 | 12 |
| Partial / major outages | 2 | 0 |
| Avg time to resolve | 19h 29m | 12h 49m |
| Outages we detected | 0 | 0 |
| Transparency score | 100/100 | 100/100 |
Where Shift4 Payments and Square Payments differ
- Square Payments reported 2.4× as many incidents as Shift4 Payments over the last 90 days (12 vs 5).
- Shift4 Payments had 2 partial or major outages, compared with 0 for Square Payments.
- Square Payments fixes problems faster: 12h 49m on average, against 19h 29m for Shift4 Payments.
- Shift4 Payments's longest outage on record lasted 3h 24m (Aug 24, 2026); Square Payments's lasted 17h 43m (Apr 30, 2026).
90-day uptime
Shift4 Payments
Square Payments
- No incidents
- Degraded
- Partial outage
- Major outage
- No data
Recent Shift4 Payments incidents
- Degraded performanceOct 22, 2026 · resolved in 7d 4h
Affected: Merchant Funding USA, Card Processing
- Degraded performanceOct 22, 2026 · resolved in 1h 29m
Timeouts for US processing 10/22/26
Affected: TSYS, Shift4 Dine POS - US, eCommerce, Shift4 One, Shift4 Venue Payments (US)
- InformationalSep 11, 2026 · resolved in 53m
Affected: Shift4 Dine POS - US, Shift4 Dine POS - Canada, Shift4 Dine POS - UK/EU, Shift4 Dine Mobile, Shift4 Dine Online Ordering, Shift4 Dine Kiosk
- Major outageSep 10, 2026 · resolved in 1h 1m
Eigen Processing Disruptionofficial update ↗
Affected: Eigen Gateway
- Partial outageAug 24, 2026 · resolved in 3h 24m
Partial Funding Delay - 8-24-2026official update ↗
Affected: Merchant Funding USA
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