This international step was taken by Jack Dorsey, of Twitter fame.
Co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, is taking Square for an international leap, expanding it outside of the American borders and into the fast moving Canadian mobile payments marketplace.
This effort is to help to expand Dorsey’s vision that “commerce is easy for everyone”.
It is his belief that Canada is primed and ready to use his most recent technology startup. The launch of Square, a free mobile payment credit card reader, has now made its way into Canada, two years after its original release in the United States. The San Francisco company is now diving into a marketplace that is swimming with major players, such as banks, credit card companies, telecoms, and others. All of these companies are already vying for top spot among consumers in the company.
Square is already processing over $8 billion in mobile payments in the United States.
Its goal is to provide small businesses – and virtually any other form and size of selling company – the opportunity to be able to accept mobile payments via credit card through the use of a small peripheral device that attaches to Android smartphones and tablets, iPhones, and iPads.
The Square Register app, which is available for free on those devices, functions along with the peripheral device and runs on the smartphone or tablet. There is a 2.75 percent transaction rate, which is lower than the traditional mobile payment or standard credit card transaction processing fee.
Though most famous for founding Twitter, Dorsey is also the co-founder and CEO of Square. He explained that the company saw several reasons to take its first steps out of the American marketplace and into Canada. This includes the relationships that it has already established with notable banking partners, which make it easier for it to establish itself in that country as opposed to somewhere else.
He explained that “We are seeing something that we saw early on in the United States, which is there is a lot of small business activity. There’s a lot of entrepreneurial spirit.”
There are already more than 2 million American businesses and individuals that are able to use mobile payments through Square. The company itself has over 400 employees.
