The San Francisco-based firm’s tech team started piloting the stock trading feature few weeks before. Clients of Square will be able to trade stocks once the app moves from beta to live stage.
Square is yet to decide the precise date of the planned option launch. By the end of June 2019, Square facilitated Bitcoin (BTC) deposits, but carried a $10,000 limitation over a seven day period. Transaction confirmation usually takes several hours on Bitcoin’s blockchain.
In July 2019, Cash App announced a $50,000 worth BTC reward program after its stock price rallied consistently.
Square’s stock had appreciated roughly 56% as of July 2019, with $57.20 and $81.80 being the starting and ending price in January and July, respectively. Notably, Bitcoin, during the same time frame, had appreciated 157% in value.
In summer 2019, Jack Dorsey, founder of payment processing app Square and creator of social media platform Twitter, assembled a tech team focused on improving crypto framework as a whole.
At that time, Dorsey highlighted the advantages of Square. He said “Just from a business perspective, we don’t look like an Internet company today. An Internet company can launch something and it’s available around the world. Whereas with payments, you have to go to each market and pay attention to regulators. You need a partnership with a local bank. This is a very slow process in any new market.”