DIGITAL
It’s hip to be … Block? Toby Shapshak
Jack Dorsey: Co-founded Square in 2009 Getty Images/Joe Raedle
ý Just days after his mic drop on Twitter, former CEO Jack Dorsey has spurred more online hype by renaming the other business he runs — from Square to Block. Only in the tech world does a name change constitute news. In most other industries, after the renaming hype has died down, it is seldom referenced again. Not many people call Ninety One “formerly Investec”, do they? But when Facebook tries to dodge bad publicity by rebranding as Meta Platforms, or Google creates a holding company called Alphabet, it remains in the news — for obvious reasons. Square is different. It isn’t a social media company but the other white-hot kind of booming business: digital payments. Dorsey co-founded it in 2009 as a way to disrupt the payments industry then (and now) dominated by credit cards. Instead of requiring a bankissued point-of-sale terminal to process these cards, Square was literally a square plastic credit card reader that plugged into the headphone jack of an iPhone (initially, before it expanded to Android). Small merchants in the US could use this smart add-on to accept payments through their smartphones. It was a stratagem that opened up a juicy new revenue opportunity for the Twitter cofounder’s fledgling business. A decade later, now that most 16
financialmail.co.za
.
smartphones have dropped the headphone jack and the payments industry is rapidly outgrowing the once dominant credit card, Square wants to be more. It wants to capitalise on the huge blockchain opportunity that is opening up. The blockchain, from which Block gets its new name, is a The recently powerful way of processing transresigned Twitter CEO actions — and has rebrands payments firm as been the driving his focus shifts to his new technology behind great passion: innumerable new c ryptocurrency services. Dorsey is a blockchain and cryptocurrency believer, and has been promotOctober and doubled ing these technologies for years. down with a further $170m The only description on his Twitter in February. profile is “#bitcoin”. Of the name change, Dorsey “I don’t think there’s anything said: “We built the Square brand for more important in my lifetime to our seller business, which is where work on and I don’t think there’s it belongs. Block is a new name, anything more enabling for people but our purpose of economic around the world,” he told Fortune empowerment remains the same. magazine in June. Bitcoin, for him, No matter how we grow or “changes everything”. change, we will continue to build Though he brought in a cryptotools to help increase access to the focused team at Twitter, the idea economy.” reportedly didn’t gel with CFO Ned The holding company’s name Segal, who told The Wall Street change “acknowledges the compaJournal that bitcoin was too ny’s growth” while it “creates room volatile. “We [would] have to for further growth”, said Dorsey, change our investment policy and who resigned as Twitter CEO in choose to own assets that are November. more volatile,” Segal said. Dorsey must be relieved to no Square, meanwhile, famously longer be CEO of the two firms, bought $50m in bitcoin last year in which he has been doing since
December 16 - December 22, 2021
2015 — albeit in a famously handsoff way. In 2019, after a cryptothemed trip to African innovation hotspots in West and East Africa, he said he wanted to spend six months a year here — a plan that was curtailed, seemingly, by angry investors and Covid lockdowns. Square, now Block, has built up an interesting array of offerings. Its principal Square business will remain unchanged, as will its layby service Afterpay, payment service Cash App and the Tidal music streaming service it bought from Jay-Z. Its bitcoin crypto business, called TBD54566975, also keeps its “easy to pronounce” name. But Square Crypto, which is “dedicated to advancing bitcoin”, will be renamed Spiral. Square tweeted: “We’ve been
