While the $40B company now known as Block is expanding into new spaces, one of its primary goals remains clear: making Square the go-to platform for payments and business software. We dive in with insights from Square's customers and its competition.
Square is a fintech darling.
The company, which provides commerce solutions for millions of businesses, was founded in 2009 and went public in 2015.
In December 2021, Square changed its corporate name to Block to reflect its growing number of business lines — or “building blocks” as it calls them (including Square, Cash App, and Tidal).
We dig into what Square customers are saying about its strategy but first, some context.
While the $40B company is expanding into new spaces (see our Block strategy map below), one of its primary goals remains clear: making Square the go-to platform for payments and business software.
The restaurant industry has been a key focus area for Square’s expansion.
In May 2022, Square acquired GoParrot (its 26th acquisition), a restaurant ordering and marketing platform that offers a white-label app and loyalty tracking.
It’s also teamed up with a number of companies to better serve its restaurant partners — from SoundHound (conversational AI ordering automation) to Craftable (profit management and analytics) — as highlighted on its CB Insights profile below.
What are actual customers saying about Square and its competition? Read on for insights from Yardstiq’s software buyer interviews.
Square’s acquisition of GoParrot keeps customer on board for another year
Square
We’d really outgrown Square’s system. It was very restrictive. It did not give us a lot of functionality from an enterprise standpoint…We were about to install a test for NorthStar in one of our locations and we just happened to get an email from Square saying, hey, we just bought this new company called GoParrot. We’re doing this “Square for Restaurants” now, and it was something that fulfilled a lot of the needs that we had that started the whole evaluation process. It’s a better enterprise solution for us and that’s what we ended up committing to testing for the next year. — Senior Director of Marketing, Restaurant chain
Read the full transcript here.
Integrations are a plus, though customer would prefer something built in
Square
Another integration that we had with Square was with Craftable, which was our inventory system and it works well. It is a big lift in terms of labor of keeping that up to date and managing that so that we can take a look at costs on a week-by-week basis…I don’t think Toast was set up really to handle complicated recipes. Lightspeed actually has their own kind of built-in programming for that…I think a [built-in program] was something that we were really interested in [when we reevaluated], in figuring out if that was something that we could either get through another POS system or another integration. — General Manager, Brewing company
Read the full transcript here.
While Square’s product breadth impressed this buyer, Toast won on simplicity
Toast
Overall, Square was Toast’s biggest competitor. Because at the same time we were also introducing our e-commerce business and Square had a very good product which would feed not only this food and beverage or restaurant business but also our retail business where we were introducing the e-commerce part. So we were thinking whether or not to go for Square because they would be able to cover two additional areas. But then at the end of the day, we knew the implementation time was going to be crucial for us. That’s why we thought that we should go for a simpler version which was Toast. — Operations Director, Supermarket chain
Read the full transcript here.
Shift4 Payments pricing beats out Square’s for this customer
Shift4 payments
Ultimately, we found that Square was not as flexible as Shift4. Their rates were not as competitive — they were significantly higher, at least in the offer that we were shown. PayPal and Venmo, again, likewise higher rates, not as much flexibility in the hospitality space. Toast was a good potential solution if you were a smaller restaurant or hospitality operator. We had concerns about their ability to handle the transaction volume and the development of their point-of-sale system over an environment like a sports and entertainment venue like we are. — Director of Food & Beverage, Large venue
Read the full transcript here.
What’s next? Buyer thinks Square will make a 360 view into live sales possible
Square
I think, personally, that within the next year, year and a half, that Square is going to be able to figure out what Avero Slingshot does and they’re going to bring the whole entire thing in-house, just because of the fact that in the economy we’re going into 2023, labor the way it is — everybody is going to want to see live inventory. Everybody is going to want to see live labor and everybody wants to see it now. I don’t want to have to scroll through three platforms to find the information that I want. Time is money and I don’t have the time to waste. — Director of Food & Beverage, Restaurant chain
Read the full transcript here.
Clients can learn more about Square’s moves into banking and mobile payments here.
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