This release is rolling out gradually and may not be available to all clients yet. It's part of a new full-screen checkout flow (replacing today's split-payment drawer) currently in a release candidate, gated behind a rollout flag. Nothing described here is reachable in the app version currently in production.
How Payment-Removal Recovery Works
It only applies to gift card and card tenders. Removing cash, loyalty points, or a house account payment from a sale has no outside system to reverse, so those are removed instantly with no failure risk. Only gift card and card payments involve an external refund/void that can fail.
The terminal never silently drops a payment it couldn't reverse. If the reversal fails, the payment stays applied to the sale rather than disappearing — so the sale total and what actually happened to the customer's card or gift card never fall out of sync.
It escalates the second time, not the first. A single failed retry offers a plain "try again." Failing again on the same payment escalates the message and adds a way to abandon the sale entirely — it doesn't take three or more failures to get there.
Abandoning the sale doesn't fix the underlying payment. It clears the sale off the terminal, but the gift card or card charge that failed to reverse is still sitting out there unresolved — it takes a manual correction from support afterward, not an automatic one.
What a Cashier Sees
Step 1
A payment (gift card or card) has already been applied to an in-progress sale. The cashier taps to remove it.
Step 2
If the reversal fails, a dialog appears: "Couldn't remove payment" — "The [gift card/card] refund didn't go through, so this payment is still applied. Please try again." A red line beneath it gives the specific reason (for example, "The refund amount exceeds the captured amount" for a gift card, or "The card refund was declined" for a card). Two options: "Dismiss" and "Try again."
Step 3
Tapping "Dismiss" leaves the payment applied and closes the dialog — nothing is lost, and trying to remove that same payment again starts over from Step 2.
Step 4
Tapping "Try again" retries the same reversal. If it fails again, the dialog escalates: "Payment still couldn't be removed" — "The [gift card/card] refund keeps failing. This payment stays applied until it's removed." "Dismiss" is now replaced with "Discard order."
Step 5
Tapping "Discard order" opens a confirmation: "Discard this order?" — "This order and its [amount] [tender] payment will be discarded. Support will need to correct the payment manually. This action cannot be undone." Choosing "Discard order" here clears the sale off the terminal — the screen returns straight to an empty "Scan or select an item to begin a sale" state, ready for the next customer. Choosing "Keep order" returns to the retry dialog.
What "Discard Order" Actually Does
It clears the in-progress sale from the terminal — the cart resets, and the cashier can start a new sale immediately.
It does not reverse the gift card or card charge that failed to remove. That payment stays exactly as it was on the card network or gift card balance — charged, with no corresponding completed sale on file.
Because of that gap, the confirmation dialog is explicit that support has to step in afterward to correct it manually. This isn't a cleanup step the terminal finishes on its own.
Troubleshooting
A payment won't remove and this dialog keeps appearing. Try again once or twice — most reversal failures are transient (a network hiccup or a momentarily unresponsive card network). If it keeps failing, don't force it repeatedly; either leave the payment applied and complete the sale as-is, or discard the order and flag it to support with the sale details and amount.
Discarded an order from this dialog. The sale is gone from the terminal, but the payment it was trying to reverse is not resolved — get the amount, tender type, and approximate time to support so they can correct it on the card or gift card side manually.
Not sure if you're on the "first failure" or "repeated failure" dialog. The button text is the tell: if you see "Discard order" as an option, you're past the first failure — a fresh attempt (after tapping "Dismiss" and trying again later) starts back at the plain "try again" version.
This doesn't come up for a cash or points payment. Expected — only gift card and card payments have an external charge to reverse, so only those tenders can hit this failure path.