Story highlights
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is now ceo of a mobile payments company
Square enables the virtual exchange of cash and goods
Dorsey told CNN Square makes the entire process seamless, rather than just aspects of it
His comments come as social network Twitter, valued at $11 billion, prepares to go public
Jack Dorsey might be an unassuming character – but he’s also a tech titan who reinvented the way the world communicates. And now he’s on a mission to do the same for commerce.
The co-founder of Twitter and chief executive officer of Square met with CNN’s Maggie Lake to share his vision on how mobile payments will change the world of commerce.
Square, which enables the virtual exchange of cash and goods, is designed to “give time back to our sellers, give time back to our merchants, so they can really focus on building their business up,” Dorsey told CNN.
“We don’t want this to just be about payments, we don’t want it to be about transactions – those are all mechanical things that should be so intuitive that they disappear,” he said.
Dorsey is criss-crossing North America to promote Square and talk to small business owners, whom he sees as key to reinvigorating economic growth.
“What I think is great about technology, and every technology that exists, [is that] it increases the number of people who can participate, in our case commerce,” Dorsey said. “And, it increases the velocity that they can participate.”
Square, Dorsey added, enables a businessperson to “start as an individual, you can start selling something, and then you can grow.”
Square is competing in a jammed arena – mobile payments already exist via Paypal and others – but Dorsey told CNN its pitch is different.
“A lot of folks are looking at parts of the equation and Square is looking at the entire thing,” Dorsey said.
“If you’re not solving for the entire experience, you are putting those seams in front of the customers – and the customers see that. And they have all these friction points, and it actually slows down the business.”
Square aims to have “one, end-to-end, great, frictionless experience – and that’s been our focus from day one,” Dorsey said.
Transactions through Square have tripled over the last 18 months, a success that nevertheless remains overshadowed by the Dorsey’s involvement in Twitter.
The micro-messaging social network, which has shifted how people and businesses communicate, is valued at up to $11 billion and will go public next month.
However, Dorsey said Square is an “entirely new canvas,” dealing as it does with commerce rather than communication.
Both ideas are “fundamental to humanity….both are extremely complex and both companies are trying to make each simple.” But, Dorsey added, ” they are very very different problem sets and they require different solutions to each one.”
