The big picture: Square is getting a fresh coat of paint. The financial services company co-founded by Jack Dorsey is changing its name to Block, which it believes better encompasses its vision and creates room for further growth. The bigger story, however, may be that we now know what Dorsey plans to focus on after leaving Twitter.
The Square brand was built for the company’s seller business, we’re told, and the change “allows the seller business to own the Square brand it was built for.”
Square launched in 2009, and its first product was a card reader that plugged into a mobile device’s headphone jack to enable small businesses to accept credit card payments. A few years later, Square introduced a mobile payment service called Square Cash (now Cash App). More recently, the company has become heavily involved in cryptocurrency and even purchased a majority stake in streaming music service Tidal.
Block is @Square, @CashApp, @spiralbtc, @TIDAL, @TBD54566975, and our foundational teams who support them. We’re here to build simple tools to increase access to the economy. https://t.co/CkVKxHPkqy pic.twitter.com/RMOnxCLP9Y
— Block (@blocks) December 1, 2021
The announcement comes just days after Dorsey resigned as Twitter’s CEO. Dorsey said he believed the company was ready to move on from its founders (Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 and served as its first CEO before exiting, then coming back for another run). With Twitter now in the rearview, one would think Dorsey can now focus all of his attention on further growing Block.
The name change won’t be accompanied by any organizational changes, although the company did note that Square Crypto will change its name to Spiral.
"The name has many associated meanings for the company — building blocks, neighborhood blocks and their local businesses, communities coming together at block parties full of music, a blockchain, a section of code, and obstacles to overcome."
Pending satisfaction of all legal requirements, Square expects the name change to go into effect on or around December 10, 2021. The company's NYSE ticker symbol will remain as "SQ" for now.
https://www.techspot.com/news/92474-after-leaving-twitter-jack-dorsey-rebrands-square-block.html
