The digital payments company Square, which was co-founded and continues to be run by the former Twitter boss, Jack dorsey, changed its corporate name to Block on Wednesday as it expands into cryptocurrency and other fintech tools.
The Square payments platform – which was the company’s only offering when it was founded in San Francisco by Jim McKelvey and Dorsey in 2009 – will retain its name, and the now public company will continue to trade under the symbol “SQ.”
Square began by providing small businesses with devices that connect to smartphones or computer tablets to process credit or debit card payments.
Since then, the company has expanded to include the Cash App and Jay-Z’s music streaming service Tidal.
“We built the Square brand for our seller business, which is where it should beDorsey said in a statement.
“Block is a new name, but our purpose for economic empowerment remains the same”.
The corporate name change is intended to be a nod to the company’s growth, and will not involve organizational restructuring, according to Block.
Facebook recently changed its corporate name to Meta in a similar move, while Google adopted the corporate name Alphabet years ago. “It’s not to set goals … but we are going to do it!” Square said in a comment forum below a tweet from Dorsey about the name change.
“The name has many associated meanings for the company: building blocks, neighborhood blocks and their local businesses, communities gathering in music-filled block parties, a chain of blocks, a section of code, and obstacles to overcome,” Square said in a statement.
Square has made it known that you are working on a wallet to store digital money, and Dorsey recently expressed interest in the company getting involved in cryptocurrency mining.
Under the leadership of Dorsey, who has frequently expressed his interest in cryptocurrency, Square bought $ 50 million worth of bitcoin even before the wave of institutional interest that pushed the price of the digital currency to all-time highs this year. In February, he raised his bet and invested another $ 170 million in it.
The new name will take effect around Dec. 10, Square said, but the “SQ” symbol on the New York Stock Exchange will not change for now.
Earlier this week, Dorsey announced that he was leaving Twitter, after running the social network during the tumult of Donald Trump’s presidency and surviving an impeachment offer from an activist investor in 2020. The former CEO was pressured in 2020 by Elliott Management amid concerns that it had overextended itself by running both Twitter and Square.
Twitter’s chief technology officer Parag Agrawal has taken over the top job, and Dorsey said he would remain a board member until around May to help with the transition.
(With information from AFP and Reuters)
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