Square (payment company)

Square, Inc.
legal form	Corporation
ISIN	US8522341036
founding	February 2009
Seat	San Francisco , United States
management	Jack Dorsey (CEO)
Number of employees	2,000 (2019)
sales	3,299,000,000 US dollars (2018)
Branch	Financial services
Website	www.squareup.com

Square, Inc. is a financial services and mobile payments company headquartered in San Francisco . The company sells several software and hardware products and has developed into a service provider for small businesses. More than 30 million companies use its technology to simplify credit card payments and track sales. The company was founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey and started its first service in 2010. Since November 2015, the company has been listed as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange .

The name Square ( German : Quadrat) is derived from the company's square card readers.

history

The original inspiration for Square came to Jack Dorsey in 2009 when Jim McKelvey (then a friend of Dorsey's St. Louis ) couldn't complete the sale of one of his $ 2,000 glass art works because he couldn't accept credit cards for payment . Before Square became a successful San Francisco-based tech company, co-founders Jack Dorsey, who also founded Twitter , and Jim McKelvey, had worked on the idea in a small office in their hometown of St. Louis.

The Square Reader was the company's first product. Credit card payments were accepted through a phone jack on a mobile device. The original version consisted of a simple read head that was connected directly to a 3.5 mm jack plug and was used to forward unencrypted analog map information to smartphones for amplification and digitization . Over time, Square developed other products that are more in the service area. Many small business owners, who otherwise could not have afforded to accept credit cards, used these services because of their relative simplicity.

Early investors in the company included Acequia Capital , Sequoia Capital and Khosla Partners . On November 19, 2015, Square debuted ( IPO ) on the New York Stock Exchange with an initial market value of $ 2.9 billion. By 2018 it had grown to over $ 30 billion. In 2014, the company launched Square Capital , offering corporate finance to merchants who use Square. In June 2015, Apple announced that Square would be releasing a new reader that would also accept Apple Pay and other contactless payments.

The Cash App (formerly Square Cash) enables personal money transfer via the app or the website. In March 2015, the company launched Square Cash for Business, which enables individuals, organizations and business owners to send and receive money with a unique username. In November 2017, the Square Cash app announced a trial program that would allow certain users to trade Bitcoin .

Square bought several smaller start-ups as it expanded. On April 27, 2018, Square announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based Weebly , a website building and web hosting company. Square acquired the Caviar grocery delivery service in August 2014 . After launching Square for Restaurants in May 2018, the company became the first to own both a grocery delivery service and a point-of-sale service .

Web links

• Square Official Website

Individual evidence

1. ^ Square Revenue 2013-2019. Retrieved October 27, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Square Was Almost Named Squirrel Until Dorsey Had Lunch At Apple. May 26, 2011, accessed October 27, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Kathrin Werner: Pay Service Square - Big money with small amounts. Retrieved October 27, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Nikolas Kessler: Square: Square, practical, good! Retrieved October 27, 2019 (German). 
5. ↑ Swiped . In: The Economist . November 19, 2015, ISSN  0013-0613 ( economist.com [accessed October 27, 2019]).
6. ↑ Natt Garun: Square will launch its Apple Pay-compatible wireless reader this fall. June 8, 2015, Retrieved October 27, 2019 (American English). 
7. ↑ Mark P. Cussen: What is Square, Inc? Retrieved October 27, 2019 . 
8. ^ Square confirms purchase of food delivery startup Caviar. Retrieved October 27, 2019 .