∞ Square processes $2B payments annually

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TechCrunch:

Square’s Keith Rabois also revealed a number of growth statistics for the company, including that the payments service is now processing $2 billion in payments volume per year. To date, Square has been activated by 800,000 merchants which is up from 500,000 card readers shipped in May. Rabois says that Square’s merchants are now 10% of the reach of the Visa/MasterCard world.

Square is the credit card processing service that works using a tiny card reader which plugs into your iPhone or iPad’s headphone jack. It’s a remarkable success story for the scrappy young company.

What’s unclear from Rabois’ comments is how much of that 10 percent of the reach is additive – in other words, vendors who wouldn’t otherwise process credit card payments because of the expense and hassle of “traditional” processing services. Square is quite popular with non-traditional merchants who, prior to Square, had cash-only businesses.


  • http://twitter.com/VGISoftware Daniel Swanson

    We’re one of those “non-traditional merchants.”

    We really like the convenience and simplicity, and the service charge is comparable to PayPal, which we use, as well.

  • BoredInOttawa

    I really really really wish Square would operate in Canada.  But with $2Billion in transactions in USA only, why would they bother. 
    Sigh. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jay-Gould/100001574690315 Jay Gould

    Square is a great story and its founder is a great entrepreneur, but merchants need to look beyond the hype and into the numbers.  The question you should be asking yourself is “Does it make sense for me to accept credit card with Square?”  For some the answer will be “yes” (as for the cupcake baker in our story: http://blog.unibulmerchantservices.com/cupcakes-credit-card-processing-and-square) but for quite a few the answer will be “no.”

    Simply put, Square is a good match for merchants with low monthly processing volumes (because it comes with no monthly or any other fixed fees) and for merchants whose average transaction amount is very low (because Square charges no fixed transaction fee).  However, for everyone else its 2.75% per-transaction rate is simply way too high, as the industry average hovers around 1.70% plus $0.20 per transaction.