Jack Dorsey’s Square To Become Block
Jack Dorsey’s payments giant Square is changing its name to Block as it expands to focus on technologies such as blockchain.
In an announcement, Square said that its new name, effective December 10, “acknowledges the company’s growth” and “creates room for further growth.”
In a statement, Square CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey said, “We built the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs [...] Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.”
Dorsey founded Square in 2009 alongside Jim McKelvey with a focus on in-person payments and its smartphone-friendly card readers. Since, Square has added a peer-to-peer digital banking app and small business lending and started to offer crypto and stock trading.
Under the rebrand, there will also be a name change for Square Crypto, a separate part of the company focused on the advancement of bitcoin, which will soon become “Spiral”.
In a statement, Dorsey's company said that the name Block “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.”
The announcement follows Dorsey’s resignation from his role as CEO at Twitter on Monday. He had served as the CEO for both Twitter and Square since 2015.
