A few days after Jack Dorsey stepped down from his role as Twitter’s chief executive, his Fintech firm is now changing its name.
Square Inc. — a Dorsey-led digital payments company based in San Francisco — made an announcement yesterday that it was rebranding to Block Inc.
Block will now become a corporate parent company of Square, which remains the official name of the business that provides Seller services and software.
In reality, the rebranding will differentiate the corporate entity of Square from its other businesses — a tactic similar to Facebook’s rebranding to Meta Platforms in November.
In a recent statement, Dorsey said they created Square Inc. “for [the company’s] Seller business”, adding the rebranding won’t change the company’s “purpose for economic empowerment”.
No organizational structure changes to take place
While the rebranding will happen soon, no organizational changes will take place.
The company’s different business units (under the Square umbrella) — including the Bitcoin-focused financial services segment, Tidal (music streaming service), and Cash App (a P2P payment service) — will retain their respective brand names.
In a statement, Square said the name [Square] holds a lot of meaning to the company.
“The name has many associated meanings for the company — building blocks, neighborhood blocks and their local businesses, communities coming together at block parties full of music, a blockchain, a section of code, and obstacles to overcome.”
The team “dedicated to advancing Bitcoin” (Square Crypto) will also rebrand to Spiral.
Square plans to create a Bitcoin wallet in the future
Dorsey is not new in the cryptocurrency world. Through Square, he bought Bitcoin worth an estimated $50 million even before other institutional investors showed interest — which now propels Bitcoin’s value to sky-high rates this year.
In February, Square raised its wager and invested more than $170 million in Bitcoin.
That said, Square is now contemplating creating a hardware Bitcoin wallet, as a way to make its custody of virtual currencies more mainstream.
According to Square, they will officially rebrand as “Block Inc.” on 10th December (or thereabout), adding the “SQ” ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange will remain unchanged for the time being.
In August, Square bought Afterpay — the Australian “buy now, pay later” company — for approximately $29 billion.
However, Afterpay was not mentioned among the list of brands under Square’s umbrella that will maintain its respective name or organizational structure. Odds are, it [probably] won’t after Square officially rebrands as “Block”.
