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BUSINESS PROFILE
How Square TRANSFORMED the Way We Pay
If you’ve bought a cup of coffee from a local cafe lately, you’ve probably engaged in a familiar ritual. You hand your card to the barista, they swipe it on a little white dongle plugged into an iPad, and then they swivel the screen to face you. You add a tip, scrawl something vaguely resembling your signature, grab your warm drink, and head out the door.
The entire process is quick and painless. No more rummaging around in your wallet for the appropriate bills and change. But who do you have to thank for this totally seamless transaction? Look no further than Square, founded in 2009 by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and his friend and former boss, Jim McKelvey. “If you can provide a service or product that streamlines the work and lives of those around you, YOU’LL QUICKLY BECOME INVALUABLE .” Before Square hit the scene, if a small-business owner wanted to accept payment by credit card, it was a clunky, costly process. To be able to legally accept plastic, merchants were required to register, which was an expensive, difficult headache that most people simply couldn’t afford. This resulted in thousands of dollars of missed sales for vendors and an annoying hassle for customers looking to make a purchase.
“I knew what it was like to be a small merchant and be excluded from commerce because I didn’t have a credit card system,” says computer engineer and glass blower Jim McKelvey. He once failed to make a $2,000 sale because the buyer didn’t have cash on hand — a frustration he vowed never to repeat. So, McKelvey, backed by celebrity CEO Dorsey and iOS engineer Tristan O’Tierney, built the application that would eventually become Square. From the beginning, Square has always been about efficiency and ease of use. All you need is a free white dongle that connects to any iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Instead of charging sneaky fees, Square uses a straightforward, transparent payment model. It’s one more time- consuming inconvenience scratched off business owners’ lists. Today, Square believes that finding solutions to common problems has the power to revolutionize the way we do business. Since its inception, the company has experienced staggering growth, becoming almost ubiquitous with merchants of all types in just a few years. Square now employs over 600 employees and boasts a valuation of more than $6 billion.
It all comes down to making a daily process easier for everyone involved. No business owner wants to go through the arduous gauntlet of registering to accept credit cards, and fewer and fewer people want to walk around with a wad of cash in their pocket. Square removes these everyday obstructions to commerce, allowing customer and business to connect as quickly and easily as possible. If you can provide a service or product that streamlines the work and lives of those around you, you’ll quickly become invaluable. Less time and money wasted on fees and document- wrangling allows small-business owners to get back to what they do best: making money. It’s this basic concept of simplification that has made Square a no-brainer for so many merchants. Finding a simple solution to an everyday problem can lead to extraordinary results. Square’s success proves that if you offer an elegantly designed, immediate service that saves both customers and business owners time and money, you can fundamentally change the way small businesses operate for the better.
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CHANGING THE WAY SMALL BUSINESSES GROW.
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