Just weeks after Facebook announced a company name change to Meta, Square, Inc. recently revealed its own rebrand. The financial services and digital payments company, co-founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, is changing its name to Block, an effort to house all of its products under one brand.
“Since its start in 2009, the company has added Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD54566975 as businesses, and the name change creates room for further growth,” the company said in a press release. “Block is an overarching ecosystem of many businesses united by their purpose of economic empowerment, and serves many people — individuals, artists, fans, developers, and sellers.”
So what does this mean for restaurants and sellers using Square?
Square was designed to make running operations easier for all sorts of businesses and restaurants. Could a rebrand complicate the all-in-one POS system? Fortunately for restaurants who have more than enough headaches on their plate right now, the rebrand is likely to go unnoticed.
"In short, nothing will change for restaurant operators,” says Bryan Solar, head of restaurants at Square. “More than ever, we as a company are focused on providing restaurant sellers of all types and sizes access to the tools they need to start, run, and grow their business in a rapidly evolving environment.”
Square, Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD54566975 will all continue to maintain their respective brands, and there are no organizational changes planned. (Square Crypto, a separate initiative of the company focused on Bitcoin, will however take on a name change to Spiral.)
This means you won’t see a name change on any of your Square POS operating systems. The name change to Block only applies to the parent company, formerly titled Square, Inc.
“We built the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs,” said Dorsey. In the release. “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.”
The company says the new Block name encompasses many meanings, from building blocks to neighborhood blocks and their local businesses to a blockchain and beyond. The latter is perhaps most notable.
The changes were announced just two days after Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter. While he’ll remain CEO of Block, the move frees long-time-Bitcoin-fan Dorsey to focus more heavily on cryptocurrency. It’s a space Square has continuously pushed towards since the company launched bitcoin trading in 2018 with the Cash App, later adding open-source bitcoin project Square Crypto (soon to be named Spiral) under the company umbrella in 2019.
What could this mean for the restaurant industry? The impact could be huge. But in short, with Block driving the right cryptocurrency financial systems into place, some are speculating it’s only a matter of years until any one of us can walk into a restaurant and buy, say, a Big Mac or a Frappuccino, easily with crypto.
