Square, Inc.
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| Type of business | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as | : SQ |
| Founded | February 2009 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Area served | United States, Canada, Australia and Japan |
| Owner | Jack Dorsey |
| Founder(s) |
Jack Dorsey Jim McKelvey |
| Key people |
Jack Dorsey (Chairman And CEO) Jim McKelvey (Co-Founder) Sarah Friar (Chief Financial Officer) |
| Industry | Mobile Payment, Point of sale, Financial services |
| Products | Register, Market, Cash, Capital, Feedback, Reader, Stand |
| Website | squareup |
| Alexa rank |
 2,155 (February 2016[update]) |
| Launched | May 11, 2010 |
| Native client(s) on | iPad, iPhone, Android |
Square, Inc. is a financial services, merchant services aggregator and mobile payment company based in San Francisco, California. The company markets several software and hardware payments products, including Square Register and Square Reader, and has expanded into small business services such as Square Capital, a financing program, and Square Payroll. The company was founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey and launched its first app and service in 2010. It has been traded as a public company on the since November 2015 with the ticker symbol SQ.
Square Register allows individuals and merchants in the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia to accept offline debit and credit cards on their iOS or Android smartphone or tablet computer. The application software ("app") supports manually entering the card details or swiping the card through the Square Reader, a small plastic device that plugs into the audio jack of a supported smartphone or tablet and reads the magnetic stripe. On the iPad version of the Square Register app, the interface resembles a traditional cash register.
The original inspiration for Square occurred to Jack Dorsey in 2008 when Jim McKelvey (a St. Louis friend of Dorsey at the time) was unable to complete a $2,000 sale of his glass faucets and fittings because he could not accept credit cards.
The name "Square" refers to Square's card readers, which are square in shape. The name also refers to the idiomatic term for settling debts: "squaring up." Several other names for the company were considered, including squirrel, stash, and wallet. The name Squirrel was used during a meeting the company had with Apple's Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone Software, wherein Dorsey saw that the Apple cafe's point-of-sale system was provided by a company called "Squirrel Systems," and decided to change the name.
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