Square has announced a suite of new offerings in an effort to deepen and expand its presence in the digital payments market.
Under the umbrella of a new “Build With Square” platform, the company has essentially decentralized its payment processing services. Whereas the company’s business model previously revolved around its own plug-and-play POS hardware and Square Register payments processing software, it’s now offering a range of tools for business that don’t necessarily want to commit to the Square payments ecosystem.
Those tools are primarily coming in the form of APIs that third-party developers can use to integrate Square services into their own IT infrastructure. For example, one major new API will let clients process payments via Square even if they’re not using the company’s actual digital commerce products, akin to PayPal’s traditional web payments model.
That, of course, will pit Square more directly against PayPal, but that comes as the latter itself expands into various arenas of digital payments including mobile payments. With a number of other digital payments systems also proliferating – such as Apple Pay – the payments landscape is turning into something of a Wild West, with Square being another gun for hire.
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