Payments company Square is thinking about expanding what it offers to merchants and consumers by moving into money products that would be more normally associated with the big banks and the like. This looks likely to include savings mechanisms and services to help with making investments and buying and selling shares.
It’s definitely a big balance. And we’re starting to think about, are there other things we could do for our customers there? Maybe help them with their savings — how can we help them make their money work for them? It’s definitely a big balance.
– Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer, Square
In the online payments space it increasingly looks like it’s a battle between Square and PayPal. And the competition is fierce especially between the Square cash app and Venmo.
Primarily, Square is best known as a credit card processor with its base predominantly in the United States. But it does also offers payment hardware, like PayPal owned iZettle But it’s the Square peer-to-peer Cash App that is of most interest and that’s growing faster than Venmo, also owned by PayPal. And they have also firmly parked their tanks on the lawn with the recent Square Capital deal with eBay, revealed in July.
The Cash App is their USP product which, unlike Venmo, is successfully monetised. The second quarter of this year saw user spend a total of $250 million with Cash Card which was nearly triple the amount seen in December 2017.
The Cash App launched in the UK back in March but it still doesn’t offer all the functionality of the US version, and that is going to dent its adoption. Crucially you can’t get the popular “Cash Card” debit card or buy and sell cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. But you can send and receive money to your friends and family using the app.
