• General
  • September 13, 2019
  • 4 minutes read

Square Said To Be Testing Free Stock Trading Service

Square CEO Jack Dorsey Photo: Ryan Lash / TED According to a report from Bloomberg, Square is testing a new…

Square CEO Jack Dorsey

Photo: Ryan Lash / TED

According to a report from Bloomberg, Square is testing a new feature that’ll let users of its Cash App to make free stock trades, a move that looks like a jab at Robinhood, a well known free stock trading service that was recently valued at $7.6 billion. Bloomberg reports Square employees began testing the new feature in recent weeks.

Square’s Cash App already lets users do a lot of things, including sending money to friends, using an accompanying debit card, or buying and selling Bitcoin. Square doesn’t consistently provides updates on how many people use the Cash App, but as at last year December, the company said the Cash App had more than 15 million monthly active users. Robinhood, which is mostly known for its free stock trading app although it’s expanded into other areas like options trading and margins trading, had more than 6 million users as at 2018 end.

According to Bloomberg, Square’s initial product will offer no-fee stock trading but wouldn’t come with additional features like those Robinhood have ventured into. Currently, there aren’t immediate paths to profitability for most free financial products, but the race to add users in a battlefield of lots of fintech services has been fierce. Square is likely making such move as a way to add more users for an app (Cash App) that generated $135 million in revenue in its most recent quarter. Alongside the Cash App, Square makes money from several payments solutions, including debit cards, point-of-sale systems, mini-card readers, cash registers, an all-in-one platform for restaurants, and a small business lending service.

In this year’s second quarter, Square recorded $563 million in revenue, up 60% from the same period last year. The company processed $26.8 billion in payments in the same quarter.


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