At the end of 2021, the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, decided to leave the social network and hand over control to tycoon Elon Musk. Dorsey wanted to dedicate himself to investing in cryptocurrencies and to the direction of Block, another of the companies that he founded with the aim of creating a giant in the electronic payments sector. The company is nowhere near as popular as the social network, but its business is four times the size. In 2022, Block surpassed 17,000 million dollars in turnover.
This technology giant, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, controls several financial products through different applications: Square, CashApp, Afterpay, Weebly and also Tidal, a streaming music application that it acquired in 2021.
The company’s tentacles embrace different forms of electronic payments, either through the use of credit cards in physical establishments, transactions between individuals through mobile phones, the digitization of installment payments or the creation of a platform that allows businesses to create a web page. With this catalog of services, the company has thousands of companies and consumers around the world as clients, especially in the United States.
In Spain, Block landed in 2020 with the acquisition of the Barcelona startup Verse, for which it paid between 30 and 50 million euros to get its technology for payments between individuals through mobile phones.
At the beginning of 2022, the group once again bet on the Spanish market with the Square business, which aims to conquer shops and restaurants with a payment technology at the point of sale. “Jack Dorsey’s innovative culture has permeated the entire technological offer and, today, Square sells terminals with software that greatly improves the efficiency of the service when compared to the offer of other traditional competitors,” says Gonzalo Saenz. , Sales Director of Square in Spain. In addition, the company has flexible charging policies – it does not require its clients to stay – and its business model combines the payment of a monthly fee for the use of technology and a small commission for each transaction.
Since landing in the country, the company has expanded to large and small cities in most autonomous communities. Its clients include innovative restaurant brands, such as the Vicio hamburger chain, the specialty cafeteria brand Nomad Coffee or the Somos Esencia restaurants. In addition, Square has also broken into the sector of large musical events, such as Brunch Electronik or Primavera Sound. “This year is the first time that we work for this great festival, both in the Barcelona and Madrid editions. We hope to repeat next year. We have experience with other big events like Coachella and Lollapalooza,” says Saenz.
Being a listed company, the company is not authorized to reveal billing figures for its business in Spain, nor the number of clients or workers. Like other tech companies, Square has a strong telecommuting policy, which is why its employees always work remotely. In fact, the Spanish business is controlled from Square’s European headquarters, located in Ireland, which employs a total of 300 people. From Dublin, the firm also manages the Irish and French markets, which began their activity a year before the Spanish one, in 2021.
