Square Is Withholding Money Merchants Say They Need

It'll be interesting to see what instruments Square might actually use to "increase cash on hand by 290 percent", increasing withholding revenue doesn't seem to be enough. Debt financing following the likes of Uber and Airbnb could might as well be on the cards soon.

I wonder how much this says about Square's cash flow situation and in addition to what it says about their customer's economic conditions.

IIRC Square makes most of its money via small business lending. To the extent that space is over-represented by retail and restaurants, defaults should be spiking.

Oh god this poor guy had to sell his boat since square decided to hold a portion of his transactions (well within their right).

The claims that square is not trying to help small businesses is just bullshit though. They've helped a lot of businesses get loans when they couldn't from the major banks and have also released a lot of new features to support contact free sales.