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Havish Gupta
Stealth • 2h
How Square Revolutionized POS Payments! So it all started in 2009 when Jack Dorsey's friend, Jim McKelvey, was unable to complete a $2,000 sale because the store didn’t accept credit cards. Jack realized that credit card machines were too expensive for small businesses to get, and thus, Jack thought of creating a product that could help these small business owners. Thus, with $10 million in initial funding, Jack and Jim went out to create the first product, which was a square-shaped credit card reader that directly plugged into a mobile device. And this was a super hit! Within a year of starting, they were processing millions of dollars worth of payments every week. Then, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in May 2011, they launched Square Card Case which allowed customers to make offline payments using saved cards. Soon Square was processing $3 million worth of payments daily and later partnered with Apple to sell its card reader at Apple Stores! In 2011, Square became a unicorn by raising $100 million. Over the next few years, Square launched the Square Stand (which turns an iPad into a complete POS system), the Square Cash app (P2P payment), Square Market (ecom platform basically), and Square Order (a food delivery app). Then they launched Square Capital, one of their most successful service which provided short-term loans to businesses based on their sales data. Merchants paid back the loan with each credit card swipe. In the meantime, various other companies like Amazon, Intuit, Shopify, and PayPal entered this market, but they weren’t that popular because of the vast variety of Square’s products. Finally, they IPOed in 2015, raising $243 million at a $2.9 billion valuation (less than the previous funding round). Today, Square provides all types of payment solutions, does $24 billion in revenue profitably, and is valued at over $50 billion. Btw, before founding Square, Jack Dorsey co-founded 𝕏 and was its former CEO too.
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