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Data for today’s episode is provided by Mercator Advisory Group’s report — Square and Clover Delivering Merchant Services Beyond Payment Acceptance
What percent of Square’s payment transaction volume is large merchants?
- In Q4 2018, large merchants (>$125K GPV) accounted for 51% of payment volume for Square
- That’s up from 43% in Q4 2016 & 47% in Q4 2017. However, Square has not yet turned a profit
- Square has hundreds of thousands of US sellers as its customers, primarily small and micro businesses (<$125K GPV)
- Square’s traditional value prop included:
- fast merchant account acceptance
- simplified transaction processing
- fixed transaction fees
- Square’s current value prop now includes:
- Payroll: hire, onboard, and pay wages and taxes for employees
- Square Loyalty & Marketing: CRM tools enable businesses to engage with buyers for purchase behavior and marketing
- Square Capital: Loans based on POS data, in Q2 2019 Square Capital facilitated 78,000 small business loans @ $528 million
About the report
Small businesses suffer from a lack of expertise, financial services, and capital, leading to a failure rate of close to 50% within five years of start-up, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. However, the market has been difficult for merchant acquirers to serve, due to price sensitivity, high risk, and a high cost of sales. A new research report from Mercator Advisory Group, Square and Clover Delivering Merchant Services Beyond Payment Acceptance examines the success of Square and Clover as examples of a new approach to serving small businesses using marketplaces that provide choice and flexibility while using commodity hardware.
“Instant onboarding is the sizzle, not the steak. While digitized and fast merchant onboarding looks great, small businesses need to understand the fee schedule and the complete range of solutions and apps that directly apply to their specific operational needs and future growth,” commented Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services, at Mercator Advisory Group, and author of this report.
This report is 16 pages long and has 5 exhibits.
Companies mentioned in this report: Android, Apple, Apptizer, Bank of America Merchant Services, Celtic Bank of Utah, Clover, DoorDash, First Data, Fiserv, Intuit, PayPal, Poynt, Sam’s Club, Square, and Walmart.
