Square
An omnichannel payments and commerce platform spanning online checkout, invoices, subscriptions, APIs, point of sale, and hardware.
What changes when you choose Square.
- Legal seller
- Your business is the legal seller
- Service model
- omnichannel payment platform
- Pricing certainty
- country channel based
- Review state
- established · next review 2026-10-27
Who owns and operates Square.
Product capability and company durability are different questions. This view keeps ownership, leadership, funding, and financial disclosure separate from the provider review.
- Founded
- 2009 Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey cofounded Square in 2009; the corporate parent became Block in 2021.
- Ownership
- Square is a business inside public company Block, Inc. Parent: Block, Inc. · NYSE: XYZ
- Headquarters
- Oakland, California, United States; distributed-work model
- Team disclosure
- Parent-company workforce Block reports at group level and does not publish a current Square product-team count.
Leads Block at the July 2026 review.
Oversees finance, legal, and people functions at Block.
Founders: Jack Dorsey, Jim McKelvey
Publicly traded as Block, Inc. under NYSE: XYZ
Square went public in 2015. The parent changed its name to Block in 2021 and its ticker to XYZ in 2025.
Square segment generated $3.94B gross profit
Block reports a Square segment, making these figures more relevant than parent totals, but the segment contains more than online payment processing.
- Square segment revenue
- $8.45B
- Square segment gross profit
- $3.94B
- Square gross-profit growth
- 9%
- Block total gross profit
- $10.36B
- Square founded by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey.
- Square completed its initial public offering.
- The corporate parent changed its name from Square to Block.
- Block changed its NYSE ticker from SQ to XYZ.
US online payments are 2.9% + $0.30; country, channel, subscription, and international rates vary.
US online card. Internationally issued cards add 1.5% in the US and other documented markets. Square processing is available only in selected seller countries.
Where it fits—and where it does not.
Strengths
- Online and in-person payments together
- Straightforward regional public pricing
- Invoices, links, subscriptions, and POS in one ecosystem
Limitations
- Far fewer seller countries than global-first processors
- International-card costs vary
- Less specialized for complex SaaS billing
- Omnichannel small businesses
- Creators selling online and in person
- Businesses already using Square POS
- Your seller country is unsupported
- You need sophisticated global SaaS billing or an MoR
Can you use it, and who can buy?
- Seller coverage
- Payment processing is supported in selected countries including the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, the UK, Ireland, France, and Spain.
- Buyer coverage
- Buyers can use supported cards and methods, but Square processes in the seller's supported market and currency rules.
- Product scope
- Eligible online, service, retail, restaurant, creator, appointment, and subscription businesses.
What is built in.
- Checkout
- Online Checkout, Web Payments SDK, hosted links, APIs, and in-person point of sale.
- Subscriptions
- Subscriptions API and seller-facing recurring payment tools.
- Invoicing
- Square Invoices with market-specific processing rates.
- Payment methods
- Cards, wallets, Cash App Pay in the US, ACH in the US, and selected BNPL methods.
- Payouts
- Standard and eligible instant transfers to the seller's bank account.
Who handles what.
| Responsibility | Primary owner | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Legal seller and customer contract | You | The Square seller remains the merchant. |
| Indirect-tax registration, filing, and remittance | You | Square tools do not generally make Square the legal seller. |
| Fraud and disputes | Shared | Square provides controls and dispute workflows; the seller owns product and transaction risk. |
| Product and customer support | You | The seller supports fulfillment and buyers. |
Questions to answer before signing.
- Which legal entity acquires and settles our transactions in each seller country?
- Which payment methods, currencies, capture modes, and recurring patterns are supported?
- What are the exact international-card, FX, refund, dispute, payout, and add-on fees?
- What tax registration, calculation, filing, remittance, and invoice work remains ours?
- What PCI DSS validation and checkout-security work applies to our integration?
- How are reserves, negative balances, account reviews, and payout delays handled?
- Can payment credentials, mandates, customers, and active subscriptions be exported or transferred?
- How do balance transactions reconcile to orders, fees, refunds, disputes, and bank payouts?
Plan the exit while entry is easy.
A dashboard export is not the same as a working migration. Verify these factors with Square and a realistic destination.
- Export customers, products, prices, invoices, refunds, disputes, and balance transactions.
- Confirm whether saved payment credentials and recurring mandates can move without asking every customer to pay again.
- Map subscription intervals, currencies, anchors, trials, discounts, cancellation state, and legacy prices.
- Replace provider-specific checkout, portal, webhook, invoice, and entitlement behavior.
- Run old and new reporting in parallel until gross sales, fees, taxes, refunds, and payouts reconcile.
- Retain source records needed for accounting, support, disputes, and statutory obligations after cutover.
Sources and freshness.
Independently triple-checked against primary sources on 2026-07-29. Scheduled for review by 2026-10-27. Verify the linked source before making a production decision.
- Square payments pricing Reviewed 2026-07-29
- Square international development Reviewed 2026-07-29
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