Mobile Payment Magazine

Mobile Payment Company Square Raises $100 Million in Series C Financing

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Square, the company revolutionizing everyday transactions between buyers and sellers, announced today that it has secured $100 million in Series C financing. The round was led by new Square investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with participation from Tiger Global Management, LLC.

Square launched in early 2010 as an innovative way for individuals and businesses to accept payments on their mobile devices using an elegant and easy-to-use card reader and application. The company has seen widespread adoption since its launch and helped hundreds of thousands of businesses across the country to grow with its free hardware.

“Square has a great product with extensibility which we believe has the potential to have a lasting impact on how people make payments,” said Mary Meeker, Partner at KPCB. “Square’s product is fast, easy and fun for both consumers and vendors; a small business can be up and running within minutes.”

“Square is eager to continue our momentum and we are proud to have the support and expertise of KPCB among our team of investors and advisors,” said Jack Dorsey, Square CEO. “Our goal is to empower everyone to accept payments anywhere, and we are on course to accelerate our growth in a meaningful way.”

Square currently offers three products; the Square reader, register and card case. The Square reader takes only minutes to set up and enables anyone to accept payments anytime and anywhere on their iPhone, iPad and Android phones. The Square register for iPad serves as a full point of sale system for businesses to accept payments, track inventory, and share menu and location information. The Square card case is the neighborhood way to pay that enables individuals to open a tab at their favorite local merchants, store digital receipts, and browse nearby directory and menu listings.

Mary Meeker will be joining Square’s board on behalf of KPCB. Square also added two new board members earlier this month; economist Larry Summers and Vinod Khosla, Founder of Khosla Ventures.

Apple and Square to Partner for iPhone 5 Mobile Payments?

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One of the most common iPhone 5 rumours is about Near Field Communication (NFC), the technology that allows mobile payments with a wave or “tap” of a device. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and mobile payment company Square, is now officially available in the iPhone store.

Radu Tyrsina at IT Pro Portal, “Square seems to be a pretty comfortable way to perform mobile payments. The device that one uses to perform the card credit swipe is a small square-shaped object that can be attached to an iPhone, iPad or other smart device to perform the transaction. This throws into doubt whether the iPhone 5 will come with NFC technology after all.”

via ITProPortal.com.

Jack Dorsey’s Mobile Payment Company Square Gets Times Square Billboard

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Square, the mobile payment company co-founded by Jack Dorsey, has fittingly put a big billboard up in New York’s Times Square. Such aggressive marketing is a big change from the San Francisco-based company’s past strategy. Last week, COO Keith Rabois told Fast Company of the difficulties of creating awareness for the young startup. “Not everyone knows about Square, but everyone should,” he said. “Our job is to communicate that, and some of that communication–particularly when we’re talking about communicating to 180 million Americans–cost some amount of money.”

And at the time, it was money Square wasn’t necessarily willing to drop. According to Rabois, Square’s marketing budget in January: a measly $3,000. That’s a far cry from the tens of thousands of dollars a Times Square advertisement typically costs, though a Square spokesperson tells us the billboards were actually a gift to the company and didn’t cost them anything.

via Fast Company.

Square Inc. Signing Up 30,000+ New Accounts Per Month

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Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles Times interviewed Square COO Keith Rabois about Square’s latest round of funding,  which according to some sources puts the company valuation at over $240 million. According to Rabois, the company has “been signing up 30,000 to 40,000 new accounts per month and the pace is accelerating.”  Not bad!

Square provides a  new platform to accept debit and credit cards on a mobile devices. The Square product is a small (square) piece of hardware that attaches to mobile devices (e.g., smartphone, laptop). It’s basically a small card reader that allows merchants to swipe a customer’s credit card and complete a mobile transaction from virtually anywhere.

Before the company launched, Square Inc. raised $10 million,  with a valuation of $40 million. The lead investor of the $10 million round was Khosla Ventures.

At first blush the current $240 million valuation may seem rich for an enterprise that launched just over a year ago, but given that one of the company’s co-founders is Jack Dorsey, best known as the creator of Twitter, a blockbuster success is not out of the question.

In the Los Angeles Times blog post, Guynn asks: “How do you increase awareness of Square?”

According to Dorsey, “Historically the way people have found out about Square is that they pay a merchant at the farmers market with it and decide they want to get it themselves or they read about it on Twitter or in media coverage. But we have not engaged in traditional marketing campaigns. We are going to invest in marketing. You will see that go live in January. It’s a big task to ensure that the 180 million people who carry plastic in their wallets know about Square.How has adoption of Square grown since October, when you launched to the public?We have been signing up 30,000 to 50,000 new accounts per month and the pace is accelerating.” (via: Lost Angeles Times)

Square Versus Intuit GoPayment: Mobile Payment Comparison

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For business that want to accept credit card payments through their smartphones, there are quite a few choices available. Two leading contenders are Square and Intuit’s GoPayment. Both services offer this feature, but there are some differences that may sway your decision on which one is best for you.

For example, GoPayment requires a credit check, square does not. Intuit’s free reader supports the iPhone, and Square currently supports only Android or IOS devices.

Business Insider provides a good side-to-side comparison chart of these two services.

More information: Business Insider.

Jack Dorsey’s Square Mobile Payments Company Raises $27.5 Million in New Funding

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Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s mobile payments startup, called Square, is in the process of raising a new round of funding at a valuation of more than $200 million, according to TechCrunch. The online technology blog cites Square’s general manager Keith Rabois as indicating that Square raised $27.5 million in new funding, with Sequoia Capital leading the round.

TechCrunch says they’ve heard  that sources familiar with the matter say Square’s valuation in the round was approximately $240 million.

via TechCrunch

Mobile Payment Players to Watch in 2011

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As consumers increasingly adopt smartphone technology and all the new app’s that go with it, mobile payment is becoming much more used and accepted, and companies including Google, Apple, and other smartphone players are providing mobile-payment enabling technologies such as near-field communications (NFC) into their devices, while other service like Foursquare and ShopKick are engaging consumers at the point-of-purchase locations like never before.

Editors at Advertising Age have done a round-up of some potentially hot product and services offerings for 2011, covering PayPal, Rightcliq, Square, iConcessionStand,  and Zong.

“The rewards for savvy brands that build relationships with consumers on these new payment platforms go beyond just publicity and profit – it may just be a way to create meaningful relationships with consumers at the point of purchase and far beyond.”

More: Meet the Next-Generation Payments Systems Set to Drive Future Commerce.

Square

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Square is a revolutionary service that enables anyone to accept credit cards anywhere. Square offers an easy to use, free credit card reader that plugs into a phone or iPad. It’s simple to sign up. There is no extra equipment, complicated contracts, monthly fees or merchant account required.

Co-founded by Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey in 2009, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with additional offices in Saint Louis and New York City.

More information: Square.