Mobile payment platform Square has announced that it is now publicly available in Japan, its first country outside of North America. The iPhone is very popular in Japan, making it a potentially strong crossover market for Square, which first launched on iOS before also becoming available on Android. → Read More
Square’s not just for businesses apparently, as an invite-only page for a product called “Square Cash” has popped up. Not many details are known about it, but we’ve reached out to the company for comment. → Read More
PayPal today announced Cash for Registers to encourage merchants to switch to PayPal-powered point-of-sale solutions. The program is part of the payment giant’s bid to be the kingpin among local merchants looking for lower-cost ways of accepting credit card payments. The announcement comes on the same day that Square launched Stand to complement its Square register product on iPad tablets and… → Read More
Square has announced the hiring of a new Business Lead, Francoise Brougher, and she comes straight from spending eight years at Google. For the past three years, Brougher held the title of SMB Global Sales and Operations for the online advertising unit at Google. Although Square has grown its footprint considerably, in part because of its high-profile partnership with Starbucks, the company has… → Read More
There is no single mobile payment company in Europe that has reached the scale and stature that Square has in the U.S., where the Jack Dorsey-led startup processed $1 billion in transactions in 2012. Payleven, one of the many mobile payment startups that want to take that crown on the other side of the pond, is today announcing two more steps in its strategy to convince businesses and consumers to… → Read More
After debuting its in-store mobile payments technology PayPal Here in the U.K. two weeks ago, the payments giant is announcing another set of news around the product: an iPad app. Not only is this the first iPad app for PayPal Here, but it’s actually the company’s first native app for the tablet ever. → Read More
Despite a rocky start to the year with the sudden departure of COO Keith Rabois, Square is still making a huge push to sign on new businesses on the Square platform and deliver smart, easy service for the mobile payments platform.
The latest development in that push is a new program called “Square: Business in a Box”, which essentially acts as a package deal for small and large… → Read More
A double-dose of details today about the normally secretive e-commerce startups incubated by the Samwer bothers-backed Rocket Internet. Silvio Berlusconi was outed as one of the key investors in Square clone Payleven; and Zalando, inspired by Zappos in the U.S., is reporting 2012 net sales of €1.15 billion and reaching breakeven in its core markets of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. → Read More
Last year, mobile payments company Square signed a massive deal to power credit card processing and integrate Square Wallet with Starbucks. Today, the company is announcing integration with another coffee chain–Blue Bottle Coffee. → Read More
Competition and activity continues to heat up in the mobile payments market. UK-based mPowa — a mobile payments provider that, like Square and others, provides a dongle that merchants can attach to a mobile device to process card payments — has signed a white-label deal with Portugal Telecom for the carrier to resell mPowa’s services as the centerpiece of its own mobile payments solution. The… → Read More
Long-time investor and Valley executive Keith Rabois is leaving his chief operating officer position at payment company Square, according to a surprise announcement by the company tonight. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar will be acting COO while it looks for a replacement. → Read More
Payleven, the Rocket Internet-incubated mobile-payment service that uses a dongle attached to a mobile device to make and process card transactions — yes, like Square — is today announcing that it has picked up another round of funding, as well as a new investor. As has been the case with many past investments in Samwer-incubated startups, neither the exact funding figure, nor the investor, have… → Read More
For all of you developers out there, you know how difficult it is to manage all of the bugs that pop up in the code that you push on a daily basis. Sometimes, you just don’t know when things will go wrong in production, so you have to be nimble and at the ready to fix quickly. Managing that workflow can be as difficult as fixing the code itself. Payment company Square has built an internal… → Read More
With the Starbucks deal in place, there’s no doubt that Square will continue to eye partnerships with large brick and mortar stores and brands to power mobile payments and loyalty. But there’s a point to be made that the major opportunity may not be with the large brands like Starbucks but with the multitude of small to medium sized chains across the U.S. and beyond. These are regional stores that… → Read More
A reminder today that big companies often have trouble mirroring the efforts of companies disrupting their spaces: Payment industry giant VeriFone is killing its Square competitor Sail, which just launched in May, thanks to costs that didn’t make the “razor-thin margins” it was seeing from its small merchant customers worthwhile. VeriFone announced the closure of its dongle-based mobile… → Read More
This weekend, we told you about the launch of Square Wallet gift cards, which allow you to send gift cards to friends to their favorite places to eat and visit in their neighborhoods. The power of this is that you don’t have to visit the physical store to buy an actual gift card, which is a time suck any way you slice it. → Read More
The process of getting someone a gift card is kind of ridiculous. You go to a store, you take out your credit card, pay for it and then hand it to a friend. That’s the gist of it, and it’s a slow process.
Today, payment service Square has introduced a new way to send gift cards. With the Square Wallet (or is it lowercase W now?) app you can now go through all of the businesses that use Square… → Read More
When you think about using Square, it’s very easy to drift off into thoughts of paying for coffee, food, or goods at a farmer’s market. In reality, the point-of-sale system that Square has created is a powerful thing for any business, small or large. Yesterday, TechCrunch spent some time at Safeway Ice Rink in Union Square, right in the heart of San Francisco. I’ve learned that… → Read More
After launching its mobile payments service in Canada a few weeks ago, Square is expanding its presence in the country with new retail partnerships. → Read More
Flint, a small business-focused mobile payment app that does away with dongles and NFC and instead uses the camera on a phone to “scan” a card’s numbers, has come out of beta. The iOS 6/ iPhone 5-compatible app is now available to download in the U.S. App Store.
In development for the last 18 months, Flint first launched as an invite-only service in May 2012, at the same time that it announced… → Read More
Square just announced that it is seeing $10 billion in annual payments through its mobile payments platform. That’s up from the most recent stat from a few weeks ago of $8 billion processed annually. → Read More
The landgrab among Square-influenced mobile payment companies in Europe continues apace: in today’s development, SumUp — which launched in August with more than $20 million in backing from b-to-v Partners, Shortcut Ventures, Tengelmann Ventures and Klaus Hommels, the early Skype, Facebook and Xing investor — today is announcing that it is opening for business in Italy, Spain and The Netherlands… → Read More
iZettle — often called the “Square of Europe” for being an early mover in its dongle-based mobile payment service for small merchants — is definitely getting down to business now. Today, the Swedish-based startup announced that it has finally exited its beta phase across the rest of its Nordic footprint of Denmark, Finland and Norway, including a launch of its Android service, and it has come up… → Read More
We knew that Square did a huge deal with Starbucks that would eventually wipe out the need for old-school cash registers, and the company shares tonight that the shift is in full effect.
Starting now, over 7,000 Starbucks stores in the US will be able to accept Square Wallet. Don’t pull a card out ever again, it’s all ready to go. If you haven’t used the service at other locations, it’s a super… → Read More
As I’ve been digging deeper into companies, specifically their internal culture, one company that has stuck out to me is payments powerhouse Square. As I wrote last week, the company does some pretty interesting things to keep its team connected and on the same page. At the same time, Square is on an absolute hiring spree and is moving into a larger office in San Francisco in hopes of filling it… → Read More
It’s almost Halloween, which means that all of your grown up friends with kids will be crowding up your Facebook News Feed with ridiculous photos of 2-year-olds dressed as the Incredible Hulk. It also means that the inner-geek in all of us come out. Yes, it’s a fun holiday, and we love it because it brings out our creativity.
I mean, did you not see the awesome Path Pumpkins, which I’ve dubbed… → Read More
One of the things that really excited me about coming to TechCrunch is that I have the freedom to explore companies in a deeper, more meaningful, way. I’ve worked for quite a few startups and the people who make things tend to interest me more than what they actually make, sometimes.
Along that line of thinking, I visited the Square folks today and had a great conversation about their stance on… → Read More
Square has taken its first step outside of the U.S. for its mobile payment service: it is now live in Canada. The company said today that its mobile card reader/processor is now available nationwide, priced at the same rate as in its home market: 2.75% per swipe. In the U.S. there are now 2 million businesses using Square’s system, making a total of $8 billion in annualized payments. → Read More
It’s time to fill up that new Square office, and it looks like the company is looking to add a slew of new engineer-types. I follow a Twitter account that spits out new jobs in the San Francisco/Valley area, and the last ten tweets have been for Square, and are engineer-related. → Read More
Square has just announced plans for a new office in San Francisco. The mobile payments company, which is currently located in the Chronicle Building in downtown San Francisco, will only be moving a short distance away to a location in Central Market (1455 Market Street). The plan is to move into the new building by mid-2013. → Read More
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