To ask if anyone else has had funds witheld by sQuid?

[FruitPolos]

sQuid were the payment processor for DC's school - parents could top up the account and DC could use the balance for paying for school meals etc.

They suddenly announced at the end of February that they were withdrawing this service from all schools in March.

Schools were apparently told that sQuid would facilitate the transfer of positive balances to any new provider etc.

However, when they withdrew the service last week, they opted not to do this, and instead have kept hold of any positive balances.

Parents must now pay a £10 fee to withdraw any balances over £10. If the balance was under £10, sQuid will not allow any balance withdrawal at all.

Many parents have small amounts left on their sQuid account to ensure that their children were able to purchase school dinners up until the transfer.

Essentially, they have taken funds from potentially thousands of parents. Has anyone else been affected? I'm wondering how widespread this is.

This has affected my DCs school too. £10 admin fee for withdrawals.

Same here but I didn't have any money in there luckily

We're waiting to find out what's going to happen. I think there was £13 on it when it stopped updating. DC still getting sinners at school but we'll have to pay for what's used when new system up and running. So I don't know if that £13 has been used or is stuck, in which case I'll need to pay £10 to get it back? That's madn.

This has affected DDs school as well.

It's theft imo. Our mp has said she'll chase it if they don't give folks their money back

Ooo good shout about getting the MP involved.

Definitely worth speaking to them as this could affect thousands of people.

Those £10 fees and kept amounts under £10 will add up to a hefty amount!

I was thinking about this. There's about 1000 in DC's school. I've got a positive balance of around £3, which is a tiny amount and I can afford to lose it. But it everyone in the school had the same, then they've made £3000 profit from our school ALONE. That's outrageous! Which is why I'm cross about it.

I top up the kids accounts on payday at the beginning of the month. I remembered a couple of days later that this would be happening so I estimated how much the kids would need until the change over and then reuqested to withdraw the rest - this was before they decided to start changing £10 fee so I got all my money back and on the last day the kids bought choc bars etc to use up the balance I think we ended up with 2p, 6p and 60p left in the accounts.

I am wondering if they realised they didnt have the cash to repay everyone so announced a £10 fee to get out of refunding a huge bulk of money!

We weren't told about squid going until after it happened so didn't have a chance to forward plan. Parents just noticed their auto top up failed. Our letter from school said all balances will be transferred though. Will be interesting to see what happens.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/27/school-dinner-payment-app-squid-criticised-refund-fee

Between 180,000 and 200,000 accounts!

Our school have now said it wasn’t their decision to end the contract and they were guven relatively short notice so Squid have decided to terminate the contracts AND keep all the money. It’s shocking and yes, could add up to hundreds of thousands of pounds…..

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-smith-77937033?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app

Not very active on there but his last post is illuminating in terms of what he thinks about people's feedback

This is shocking I have £17 balance. Both my kids schools used squid. My daughter’s school said the balances would be transferred to the new provider, but from reading this, that won’t happen

Luckily our primary school changed providers prior to this happening, but I did have an issue once where I topped up and the money never showed in the Squid account, they ignored all communication so I did a charge back with my bank and got the money back that way, is that an option?

The spokesperson in that article sounds like a piece of work, talking about Ts and Cs when schools don’t really give the option of any other way to pay for the meals and they are the ones who have withdrawn their services!

We were told we had to withdraw before a certain date or there'd be a £10 fee. Wonder if I can find the email..

Squid (School fund account) has finally reduced their admin fee, it’s still worth claiming back your fund for anything above £2.50