{"id":41920,"date":"2023-10-20T15:17:26","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/richard-branson-invests-in-square-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:17:26","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:17:26","slug":"richard-branson-invests-in-square-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/richard-branson-invests-in-square-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Branson invests in Square – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"

British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has invested an undisclosed sum in mobile payment start-up Square, founded by former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey, following a $110 million funding round. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Square, founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco, enables consumers and businesses to accept credit card payments on mobile devices.<\/p>\n

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Since its launch, Square has shipped more than 800,000 card readers to merchants and is currently processing more than $2 billion in payments annually.<\/p>\n

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Branson, founder of the Virgin Group empire, is the latest investor to pour funds into Square, although the figure is unknown.<\/p>\n

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The move comes after Square raised $100 million in a Series C financing round led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.<\/p>\n

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According to Square, Branson took interest in the company\u2019s \u201crapid growth and novel technology, in particular its free hardware that allows anyone to accept credit card payments\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The company recently recorded $10 million in daily transactions, a spokesperson has revealed, up from the $4 million per day in gross payment volume that it announced earlier in the year.<\/p>\n

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According to the spokesperson, Branson\u2019s involvement in Square is a \u201cpersonal investment\u201d. In a statement released by Virgin, Branson explained his interest in the company.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m very passionate about helping people start and grow successful businesses, and Square is an incredible technology that inspires and empowers everyone to be an entrepreneur,\u201d Branson said.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s been a busy year for Square, which has also signed deals with Apple, Best Buy, RadioShack, Target and Wal-Mart.<\/p>\n

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The company, which prides itself on facilitating credit card payments \u201canywhere, anytime\u201d, says it plans to offer its mobile payments technology in international markets in 2012.<\/p>\n

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Square isn\u2019t the only start-up Branson has invested in. Fellow US start-up Tumblr, a micro-blogging platform founded by David Karp, caught Branson\u2019s eye earlier this year.<\/p>\n

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And according to Branson, there could be further investments on the horizon.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m interested in a variety of sectors,\u201d he told VentureBeat<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn recent years, thanks in part to Virgin America, I\u2019ve learned more about tech in general and social media in particular, and always look for companies that use business as a force for good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has invested an undisclosed sum in mobile payment start-up Square, founded by former Twitter chief<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41920"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}