Payments company Square revealed new hardware today that it is aiming at high-volume sellers such as restaurants and bars. / Square Payments company Square revealed new hardware today that it is aiming at high-volume sellers such as restaurants and bars. / Square
Tech

Square Has New Hardware and Payment Services Targeted at Bigger Small Businesses

Square Inc. unveiled a counter-top hardware device that’s embedded with its electronic payments technology in a move aimed at continuing to attract larger merchants.

The Square Register introduced Monday includes a customer-facing screen for buyers to see what they’re purchasing, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and acceptance of all payment types. The company, which began by offering a simple way for food trucks and street vendors to accept credit cards, has been attracting larger customers with a suite of services such as loans and inventory management software. At the end of the second quarter, 46 percent of Square’s merchants did more than $125,000 a year in gross payments volume.

“It’s custom built just for our larger-scale customers,” Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, who also runs Twitter Inc., said of the new device. “We are paying attention to their needs and their requests to us in the past.”

Square’s shares have more than tripled in the past 12 months as investors have bought into the effort by the San Francisco-based company to provide all-in-one software and hardware products to small and medium-sized business.

The new payments device may not be enough by itself to “flip customers to Square,” said David Ritter, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. “The bigger you get, the harder it is to switch and the bigger of a risk it is because it upends your whole business.”

©2017 Bloomberg L.P.

This article was written by Selina Wang from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].

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