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
At its three-day Global Leadership Conference this week, Starbucks announced further details about its planned rollout and support for Square’s mobile payments platform. First revealed in August, the deal will allow iPhone and Android users to pay using the Square mobile app at Starbucks’ 7,000 U.S. locations. Now, we have a more exact timeframe for that launch: early November. (Previously, the… → Read More
Square, the startup disrupting the payments industry with its easy smartphone/tablet card-reader, has today launched Square Directory. It is a web-based search engine that allows users to find new merchants and restaurants based on their location, and the particular items they may be hunting at the time. The service already has over 200,000 businesses listed in the directory.
Square Directory… → Read More
Mobile payments company Square is hoping to inspire and find talented women engineers with its first annual Code Camp Contest. The company is hosting a three-day, expense-paid immersion program at Square’s San Francisco headquarters called Code Camp. Engineering students can submit a resume and essays about why they would like to be a part of the program online and 15 female winners will be… → Read More
I spoke to Square today about some of their latest moving and shaking in recruiting, and learned that the company has nabbed a 5,000 square foot office space in the Atlantic Station section in Atlanta. This was first reported by the Atlanta Business Chronicle earlier this month, but we’ve learned what Square is up to. → Read More
Square has announced that it has finally closed its Series D round, totalling $200 million, with investors including Citi Ventures, Rizvi Traverse Management, and Starbucks Coffee Company. It values the mobile payments company started by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey at $3.25 billion, according to AllThingsD.
Square has been hush-hush on confirming this for months, although it did announce one tranche… → Read More
When Twitter struck a deal to move to San Francisco’s mid-Market neighborhood, the tradeoff seemed pretty straightforward: In exchange for relocating to an economically challenged area, the company would get significant tax breaks. But Jack Dorsey said at the Techonomy Detroit conference today that there’s another benefit.
Dorsey, who is product lead at Twitter and founder and CEO at Square… → Read More
It’s pretty interesting to learn about how a company got its name, and every company has a story. We learned about Square’s today, and it was almost called “Squirrel”, according to founder Jack Dorsey and Square’s Creative Director, Robert Anderson. MG Siegler broke this three years ago, but here are the full details, in tweets, fittingly. → Read More
“We probably need to change the name of this conference,” Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey said today from the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. As much as we love this conference, the media — and everyone else for that matter — tends to overuse the word “disrupt” when talking about the potential change inherent in technology. It tends to be used in conjunction with “fluff”… → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012 in San Francisco, Jack Dorsey took the stage to give us a 10-minute run-through of how he got to where he is today. I’m not sure that there’s enough time in the day to accurately portray the adventures Dorsey have experienced, but he certainly tried. → Read More
It seems that every week there’s a new company, startup, or financial institution that is launching a new way to pay from, issue rewards, or power transactions from a mobile phone. The question that always lingers in my mind when I see yet another mobile payments service pop up—how many more ways do we need to pay for a physical or digital product via a mobile device?
Matrix Partners’ Dana… → Read More
After announcing the Starbucks deal, and a new pricing structure for small businesses, mobile payments company Square is debuting a new retail partnership—AT&T. Square card readers will be available in more than 1,000 AT&T company owned retail stores, says the company.
In June, Square announced that doubled its presence in retail stores since the beginning of the year by landing in… → Read More
Add one more to the list of companies going head-to-head in the area of card payments by way of smartphone attachments: today, Berlin-based SumUp is opening up for business in the UK, Germany, Ireland and Austria, backed by an eight-figure Series A round, understood by TechCrunch to be over $20 million.
SumUp’s $20 million Series A investment comes from b-to-v Partners, Shortcut Ventures… → Read More
On the heels of announcing a mega-deal with Starbucks, mobile payments processing company Square is announcing another piece of key news—specialized, lower pricing per swipe for small businesses. Basically, Square is going to offer small businesses who make less than $250,000 per year the option of either paying the set 2.75 percent per swipe or one fixed price per month, at $275 per month, with… → Read More
There isn’t a CEO in the world who wouldn’t do well to try and emulate the late Steve Jobs in some way, shape or form. He was a visionary, and took Apple from a relatively low point to being one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. But trying to be him, or just like him, would be a vain endeavor.
An hilarious tipster brought to our attention that Jack Dorsey, a Twitter… → Read More
The payments space was even further shaken up last night, with the news that Square will take over all U.S. credit and debit card transactions for Starbucks. And those who use the Pay with Square app (iPhone and Android) will be able to pay for their sugary caffeinated drinks with nothing more than their phone. This morning in New York, a handful of journalists sat down with Square CEO Jack Dorsey… → Read More
The $25 million funding and sales deal announced late yesterday between mobile payments startup Square and coffee giant Starbucks is big, but it is only the tip of the iceberg for what the implications will be for Square and for mobile payments in general.
The deal formally covers 7,000 U.S. Starbucks stores, where Starbucks says customers will have “another way to enjoy a quick and seamless… → Read More
It might not be the funding announcement we’ve been hearing rumors about, but today Square announced that they’ve partnered with Starbucks.
Beginning this fall, Square will begin processing all U.S. credit and debit card transactions at participating Starbucks stores across their 7,000 locations. Pay with Square users will be able to find a nearby Starbucks in the Square Directory from their… → Read More
Mobile wallet platform Lemon released an Android application and a Smarter Wallet Business Plan today.
The company, which launched in late 2011 and recently raised $8 million in Series A, claims that over two million customers have used Lemon’s mobile wallet platform. The wallet only launched last month, yet they claim over half a million credit cards have been scanned. → Read More
The future is in apps you don’t open.
“We’re going to move away from the era of ‘I have hundreds of apps but never think of using them’ towards ‘I have these cool apps and they take care of me’”. This is David Lieb, co-founder and CEO of Bump, on the sea change in design philosophy that underpins Pay With Square and his company’s new photos apps Flock.
It centers around the idea that… → Read More
While the eyes of the world are focused on the global competition in London at the moment, it’s still quite rare to hear of English start-up entrepreneurs able to successfully compete globally with the Yanks. But one London based entrepreneur who might buck this trend is Dan Wagner, the founder of the successful publishing platform M.A.I.D and the current chairman of Bright Station Ventures. → Read More
A bit of a setback today for mobile payments and specifically iZettle — the startup modelled as a kind of “European Square” for merchants to take card payments on their phones. The company today had to shut off accepting Visa cards in three of the markets where it has been running pilots — Denmark, Finland and Norway — over what appears to be a problem with how it authenticated users on its… → Read More
A big development today for iZettle, the “Square of Europe” that wants to become the biggest mobile payment platform in the region. It is now extending its dongle-based service Android devices, to add to a service that already works with the iOS-based iPhone and iPad. The company tells me that the first step is a test phase on select Samsung devices in its home market of Sweden, “but our ambition… → Read More
PayPal announced today that it has acquired card.io, its partner company that allows developers to use a smartphone to capture credit information.
In the mobile payments space that is becoming increasingly crowded with major players like Square and Google Wallet and minor upstarts like Venmo, PayPal has acquired its first company in over a year. While last year’s moves were aimed at mobile… → Read More
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Square is definitely feeling insulted right now. The well-funded and popular mobile-payments startup has issued a cease and desist letter to UK-based mPowa, a newer mobile payments company that offers a device very similar to Square’s — plugging into a handset or tablet to enable point-of-sale (POS) mobile payments. But the complaint… → Read More
A very smart project is underway by a 21-year-old design student in Los Angeles. The goal: update Microsoft’s branding and messaging in three days.
Judging by the reaction, Andrew Kim has hit a tap root of pent upfrustrated creative juice out there. So far, there are more than 188 comments on Hacker News about his speculative design project. → Read More
Scott Cook started Intuit in 1983, and since then he and the company have overcome quite a few obstacles. He watched as mobile became a dominant channel in people’s lives, found ways to penetrate emerging markets, and leveraged Intuit’s excellent reputation to pick up the hot new kid on the block, Mint.com.
The acquisition went down in 2009, two years after Mint launched on the TechCrunch 40… → Read More
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