2009–2011: Launch, early years
The inspiration for Square occurred to Jack Dorsey in 2009, when his friend Jim McKelvey was unable to complete a $2,000 sale of his glass faucets and fittings because he could not accept credit cards.[15][16] In December 2009, Dorsey announced the launch of Square, which allowed merchants and individuals to accept secure payment from credit and other cards using a mobile phone and a "card-reading dongle".[2]
At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in May 2011, Square announced the release of two apps, Square Card Case (later rebranded Square Wallet)[17] and Square Register. Square Wallet, before it was removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in 2014, allowed customers to set up a tab and pay for their order by providing their name (or a barcode) using a stored credit, debit, or gift card.
2012–2016: Feature additions
In April 2012, rival payment company Verifone claimed that the Square system was insecure and that a reasonably skilled programmer could write a replacement app that could use the Square device to skim a credit card and return its details, because of the lack of encryption. VeriFone posted a demonstration video and sample skimming app to its web site.[18] Dorsey called VeriFone's claims "neither fair nor accurate", noting that all card data can be compromised by visually examining the card and that even if an attack succeeded, card issuers offered fraud protection.[19] Square later introduced strong encryption on its devices. In August 2012, Starbucks announced it would use Square to process transactions with customers who pay via debit or credit card.[20] In December 2012, the service introduced virtual gift cards.[21]
2017–2021: Banking approval
In February 2017, Bloomberg reported that Square was growing the number of larger merchants on its platform by offering additional services such as loans through Square Capital, food delivery through "Caviar" and tools for managing inventory and analyzing sales.[32] In October 2017, Square Register, was announced for small to medium-sized businesses. Square launched in the UK in 2017.[33]
In August 2018, Square released a version of its magstripe reader with a Lightning connector, allowing it to be used on iPhones without a headphone jack.[34] In October 2018, the company introduced its Terminal product.[35] That Square began allowing merchants to develop custom interfaces for the platform, via an application programming interface.[36]
2022–present: Leadership change
In February 2023, Block reported that Square served 4 million merchant clients over January–December 2022.[4] According to the company, its "larger business customers", identified by Square as generating more than $500,000 in annualized gross payment volume (GPV), made up 40% of its seller base in the third quarter of 2022. Sellers generating less than $125,000 in annualized GPV were said to be responsible for a slightly larger share of Square's 2022 mix than its mid-sized sellers (generating between $125,000 and $500,000 in annualized GPV).[39]
On September 7–8, 2023, Square experienced a 14-hour long outage that left businesses unable to process customers' payments. The service recommended vendors switch to an offline mode to mitigate the issue, where the payments get processed once the network connectivity is re-established but were met with mixed results. Several days later, Square it was determined that the disruption was caused due to a misconfiguration in the Domain Naming System (DNS).[40][41] Later in the month, Block said in a regulatory filing that the CEO of its Square business, Alyssa Henry, was set to leave the company in October 2023, and that Jack Dorsey would take on an additional role of "Square Head".
