A charge that reads “SQ *” on your bank or credit card statement is a payment processed through Square, the company many small businesses use to accept cards. The letters identify the processor, not the business, which is why an SQ charge on your bank statement often looks like a stranger even when you made the purchase yourself. You can usually figure out who the merchant is in under two minutes using Square’s free receipt lookup, and if the charge is genuinely unauthorized, federal law caps what you can lose and gives you a clear path to dispute it.
What the SQ Prefix Means
Square is a payment processor. Businesses run cards through its mobile readers, tablets, and countertop terminals, and the resulting charge lands on your statement in a specific format: SQ *BUSINESSNAME, sometimes followed by a store number or location code. The “SQ *” piece simply flags Square as the processor. The name that follows is whatever the seller typed into their Square account.
That setup is where the confusion starts. The name on the statement is often the legal entity, not the storefront. A coffee shop you know as “Morning Grind” can appear as “SQ *RIVERSIDE HOSPITALITY LLC” because that’s the LLC the owner registered. Square is popular with coffee shops, food trucks, barbershops, salons, farmers market vendors, landscapers, and independent contractors, so an unfamiliar line item frequently traces back to a small local purchase you weren’t expecting to see formalized on a statement.
How to Identify the Business Behind an SQ Charge
Square runs a free lookup tool at squareup.com/receipts that searches its transaction database. You need two things from your statement: the exact date the charge posted and the exact dollar amount, cents included.1Square. Receipt Lookup Enter both, and the tool returns the merchant’s name, business location, and often a phone number or website.2Square Support Center. Customize Receipts For most people, that’s enough to recall the purchase.
Before going further, check with anyone else on the account. A partner or family member who shares the card is a common explanation for charges you don’t personally remember.
If You Paid With Apple Pay or Google Pay
Digital wallets add a complication. Apple Pay and Google Pay issue a unique virtual card number to your device rather than passing your real card number to the merchant, so the last four digits on a Square receipt won’t match the physical card in your wallet. To match the transaction, find your device account number inside the Wallet app (iPhone) or at wallet.google.com under your transaction details (Google). The last four digits of that virtual number are what Square recorded, and matching them is how you confirm which device and card produced the charge.
Contact the Merchant Before Filing a Dispute
Once the lookup names the business, reaching out directly is almost always faster than going through your bank. A merchant can refund you in a few days. A formal dispute can run weeks or months.
There’s a second reason to try the merchant first. When you file a chargeback, the business pays a fee regardless of whether the charge was valid, and repeated chargebacks can threaten a small operator’s ability to accept cards at all. If the issue is a duplicate charge or a simple mistake, most Square sellers will refund you to avoid the chargeback process. Save the formal dispute for cases where you can’t identify the business, the merchant won’t cooperate, or the charge is genuinely fraudulent.
Disputing a Credit Card SQ Charge
If the charge is on a credit card, the Fair Credit Billing Act gives you the right to dispute it, and your maximum liability for an unauthorized charge is $50. Most major issuers waive that too.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1643 – Liability of Holder of Credit Card
The detail most people miss: the FCBA requires a written billing-error notice to your card issuer within 60 days of the statement date showing the charge. It has to go to the address the issuer designates for billing inquiries, not the general payment address.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666 – Correction of Billing Errors The dispute button in your bank’s app usually works, but your full federal protections depend on written notice. For a significant amount, send the letter too.
The notice needs your name and account number, the charge and amount you’re disputing, and why you think it’s wrong. The issuer must acknowledge it within 30 days and resolve the investigation within two billing cycles, not to exceed 90 days. While it investigates, it cannot collect the disputed amount, charge interest on it, or report it as delinquent.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666 – Correction of Billing Errors
Disputing a Debit Card SQ Charge
If the SQ charge hit a debit card or checking account, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act applies instead, and the protections are weaker. How much you can lose depends on how quickly you report it:
- Within 2 business days of learning the card was lost or stolen: liability caps at $50.
- Between 2 and 60 days after the statement showing the unauthorized charge was sent: liability caps at $500.
- After 60 days: you can be liable for the full amount of unauthorized charges that occurred after the 60-day window closed.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1693g – Consumer Liability
The last tier is the one that burns people. If unauthorized Square charges have been piling up on statements you didn’t review, you may have no legal right to recover the ones that appeared more than 60 days ago.
What Happens After You File
For debit card disputes, your bank must provisionally credit your account within 10 business days of receiving your error notice if it hasn’t finished investigating by then. The bank has up to 45 days total, extending to 90 days for certain new-account or point-of-sale situations.6CFPB. 12 CFR 1005.11 – Procedures for Resolving Errors That provisional credit is real money, but treat it carefully. If the bank sides with the merchant, it pulls the credit back, and an account you’ve already spent down can slip negative and generate overdraft fees.
Credit card disputes work differently. The issuer holds the disputed amount in limbo during its investigation rather than crediting you separately, so there’s less risk of a reversal catching you off guard.
Either way, keep documentation: the Square receipt lookup result, screenshots of the statement, any messages with the merchant, and a note of when you first spotted the charge. Disputes resolve more often in the cardholder’s favor when the file contains specifics, not just “I don’t recognize this.”