Square gets $1bn valuation with $100m investment

Square has raised another $100m, giving the payment processor a valuation of $1bn and a new board member in the shape of Mary Meeker, a partner at investor KPCB. The $100m investment follows $27.5m that was dropped into the business in January, and the original $10m raised on the back of Twitter-founder Jack Dorsey's idea. …

[T.a.f.T.]

Mid Term Plan

"At a glance, Square would seem to have a business plan that extends hundreds of years into the future"

1. Copy an OK sounding idea

2. Associate lots of buzz words with idea

3. Get some venura captial

4. Get some customers & income going (this is a weird step but for them it worked)

5. Steps 3 & 4 mean we can get more captital

6. More buzz about us plz, we are worth lots of moneyz now

7. Cash out and run for the hills

There is no need for the plan to keep going or for them to make money, just need to get given money by VCs or the market.

[Gerrit Hoekstra]

Flashback to the DotCom days?

Is this just a bad acid flashback, or are we seeing the re-emergence of unfeasible, overvalued business models because of hype in a mostly undiscerning environment (USA)? There isn't even a Hollywood movie about Jack Dorsey yet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a zero-hardware solution:

There's now an app that achieves the same thing by just taking a photo of the front of the card. Zero hardware cost, just as effective.

[Kristian Walsh]

Square: the fixie-bike of card payment processors...

Applause to El Reg for nailing Square as the poster-child for the upcoming Bubble-pop. Magstripe is obsolescent. It's only the bloody USA that forces the rest of the world to keep it on our terminals and ATMs - the rest of the industrialised world has left it behind.

Magstripe is also the weakpoint that's exploited for ATM and Credit card skimming. This has a nice symmetry to it, when you think of who'll be most likely to use a system like Square, with its low merchant verification requirements and limited security checks...

[Anonymous Coward]

This must be a different Square...

...'Cos I'm just thinking about final fantasy, chrono trigger, and earthbound...

Also, your subhead joins my list of pithy awesomeness, alongside "Lower than a snake full of buckshot" and "As secure as a porcupine in a nudist colony".