Block (SQ) burst onto the public company investor scene following their November 2015 IPO and the payment processing industry hasn’t been the same since. At the time, there were over 20 million domestic small and medium sized businesses recording less than $500k annual revenue which were either ignored, overlooked or over charged by payment processing companies.The difficulty of economically servicing so many small and low volume businesses led to high payment processing fees, many times 5-8% per transaction, limited-service choice, slow to no actual customer service, and a cash flow crunching deposit schedule of five business days after the transaction occurred. Enter SQ with forty-eight-hour deposit, a more reasonable and understandable, flat, 2.5% transaction fee schedule, a suite of functionality with the SMB owner in mind, self-directed sign up and an attachable card reader to any mobile device. Now transactions could take place anywhere, anytime and get paid for it. SQ took their service capability to a new level by also offering merchant cash advances and payroll processing services. The rest is a history of remarkable success, now includes the very popular Cash App and the ability to accept crypto as a store of value and convert it into fiat currencies for purchases. SQ has embedded themselves into the payment processing ecosystem with over four million businesses and annually enabling $210 billion Gross Payment Value (GPV). Block continues to innovate and in doing so maintains their relevance.
