By Anna Irrera
LONDON (Reuters) – Square, the payments company led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, launched its services in Ireland on Tuesday in its first eurozone foray.
The San Francisco-based Square said businesses of all sizes would be able to start using its credit card reader to process payments on mobile devices, as well as the company’s other products including invoice management software.
Square is well known in the United States for helping small merchants and self-employed professionals complete credit card transactions without a cash register or expensive software.
The launch comes more than four years after Square made Britain its foothold in Europe where it faces stiff competition from well-established companies such as U.K.’s SumUp and Zettle, which is owned by PayPal.
Square is also available in Canada, Japan and Australia, its largest foreign market. Alyssa Henry, the company’s global head of business, said Square would launch in more European countries: “We think there is large opportunity across Europe.”
She declined to disclose which country would be next but said the launch would come more quickly than Ireland had followed the UK.
Henry said Square’s advantage was in offering both hardware and point-of-sale services, as well as e-commerce solutions and online payments tools that gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the first quarter of the year, seller gross profit in Square’s international markets grew nearly 80% year over year, accounting for 8% of total seller gross profit.
(Reporting by Anna Irrera, Editing by Gabriela Baczynska)
