The story
Founded by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey on Feb 2009.1
2009: Conception
The inspiration for Block's first product "Square" occurred to Jack Dorsey in 2009 when his friend Jim McKelvey was unable to complete a $2,000 sale of his glass faucets and fittings because he could not accept credit cards. Dorsey—who also co-founded Twitter—and McKelvey began developing the company out of a small office in St. Louis. The name "Square" derives from the company's square-shaped card reader product. Square was designed to let small merchants accept card payments through a mobile device and a compact card reader, lowering the upfront cost and complexity traditionally associated with card acceptance.
2010–2014: Early years
According to Forbes, Block, then named Square, Inc., tested its payment method on 50,000 merchants in the summer of 2010, and was reporting a chargeback rate of less than 0.05 percent. In February 2011, Square was reportedly valued at approximately US$240 million, signing up 100,000 new merchants every month. In April 2011, Square announced that it had secured an investment from Visa. In October 2011, the company stated that it was processing about US$2 billion per year in payments through its "Square" card readers, charging 2.75 percent per swipe.
In 2012, Starbucks and Square announced a partnership that would allow Starbucks to use the Square payment technology to accept payments for coffee. In the same year, Starbucks also reportedly invested US$25 million in Square. Square was handling an annual payment volume of around US$6 billion around that time. In 2013, Square launched Cash App, a peer to peer payment service. In October 2014, the company launched a payroll feature within its Square payment processing system, following the additions of a merchant cash advance offering, a customer feedback product, and an invoicing service.
2015–2020: Initial public offering, growth
In 2015, Square stated that it processed about US$23.8 billion worth of payment volume in 2014. In the same year, the company sold shares in its initial public offering for US$9 per share, giving itself a market capitalization of $2.9 billion. In 2018, Vox reported Square as stating that over 7 million people used the Cash App in December 2017. Vox also stated that Cash App was the "No. 1 free finance app" in Apple's U.S. iPhone App Store and was "ahead" of PayPal and Venmo.
In October 2020, Square put approximately 1% of its total assets ($50 million) in Bitcoin (4,709 bitcoins), citing Bitcoin's "potential to be a more ubiquitous currency in the future" as its main reasoning. The company purchased approximately 3,318 bitcoins in February 2021 for a cost of around $170 million, bringing Square's total holdings to around 8,027 bitcoins (equivalent to around US$500 million in 2021, around US$481 million as of July 2024).
2021–2022: Name change and acquisitions
On March 2, 2021, Square reached an agreement to acquire majority ownership stake in Tidal. Square paid $297 million in cash and stock for Tidal, with Jay-Z joining the company's board of directors. Jay-Z, as well as other artists who owned stock in Tidal at the time, will remain stakeholders. On December 1, 2021, Square announced that it would change its company name to Block, Inc. on December 10. The change was announced shortly after Dorsey resigned as CEO of Twitter.
On December 10, 2021, the name change took effect, and Square, Inc. became Block, Inc. On December 16, less than a week into the rebrand, H&R Block sued the company for trademark infringement. The lawsuit claimed that the name sought to confuse customers by misappropriating the Block brand name owned by H&R Block. The lawsuit was resolved in April 2023 when the two companies jointly agreed to dismiss the suit. On January 31, 2022, Block completed its acquisition of Afterpay, an Australian buy now, pay later (BNPL) lender.
2023–present: Business realignment and S&P 500 addition
In February 2023, Afterpay suffered a service issue which led to a sudden reduction in the spending limits for many users. At least 2,000 users reported experiencing a difficulty with the service. Afterpay acknowledged the problem and said it was working on a fix. On September 7 and 8, 2023, Square and Cash App experienced outages, affecting thousands of users. Card payment processing, peer-to-peer payments and other transactions were among the impacted operations. On September 8, 2023, Block announced that the service disruptions had been resolved and all systems were operational by the afternoon of that day. It also said the outage was caused by an issue with the company's Domain Name System (DNS), and did not stem from a cyberattack.
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In the following week, Block apologized to its customers and acknowledged “this situation was made more difficult by our communication”. To reduce the risk of a similar outage in future, the company said it had deployed a new set of firewall and DNS server changes, expanded offline payment capabilities so merchants could still accept payments in offline mode, and put in place additional measures. Later in the month, Block said in a regulatory filing that the CEO of its Square business, Alyssa Henry, was set to leave the company in October 2023, and that Jack Dorsey, then "Block Head" and Chairperson, would take on an additional role of "Square Head".
In February 2024, Block reported an annual Gross Payment Volume of US$228 billion and an annual income of $9.8 million for the year 2023. In April 2024, CNBC reported that Block announced it had finished the development of its own standalone three-nanometer bitcoin mining chip and was in the process of working through the design with a semiconductor foundry. The company was also reported to be developing a "full bitcoin mining system", stating that its goal was to both decentralize the supply of bitcoin mining hardware and the distribution of hashrate — a proxy for industry competition and mining difficulty. In this regard, according to CNBC, Block was solving a "major barrier to entry" posed by the relative difficulty in sourcing mining rigs, their high prices and unpredictable delivery. In May 2024, the company's Square platform was found to be the market leader in point-of-sale systems in the U.S. In July 2024, Block signed a "large-scale crypto mining hardware pact", agreeing to supply its chips to bitcoin miner Core Scientific. The company did not disclose financial details of the pact. In September 2024, Block announced a leadership reshuffle, moving many longtime executives into more senior roles and creating a new position focused on customer safety. As part of these changes, Brian Grassadonia, formerly the CEO of Cash App, was appointed as the company's new "ecosystem lead" to enhance coordination across Block's business sectors.
In October 2024, Bitkey appeared in TIME's list of the "best inventions of 2024". In November 2024, Fortune reported that Block was laying off many employees from its Tidal, TBD and Square services. That same month, Block announced it was "winding down" TBD, "scaling back" investments in Tidal and focusing its resources on its bitcoin mining initiative as well as Bitkey, while adding that it was "refining" its investments based on progress. The firm changed its stock ticker from SQ to XYZ in January 2025.
In March 2025, Block announced to staff that it had plans to cut almost 1,000 employees. On July 23, 2025, Block was added to the S&P 500, replacing Hess Corporation. On February 26, 2026, Block announced it was laying off over 4,000 employees out of 10,000, citing artificial intelligence as a primary reason. Shares of the company jumped 24% following the announcement.
From Wikipedia’s article on Block, Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.9