Tag: Square

Business

The future of payments lies on the phone

by MQDuong2 Comments on The future of payments lies on the phone

For the last couple of months, a score of technology companies have announced support for Tap to Pay on phone. Here is a quick rundown:

Clover, a Point-of-Sale and business management platform by Fiserv, now enables small & medium sized businesses to accept Tap-to-Phone payments on iPhones:

As a point-of-sale platform for merchants, Clover processes over $234 billion in payments each year. Small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. can now accept in-person contactless payments on their own iPhones thanks to an integration with the Clover Go iOS app and Tap to Pay on iPhone. For Clover merchants on the move, including fitness trainers, home service providers, market vendors and food truck operators, the addition of Tap to Pay on iPhone enables contactless payment acceptance without the need for additional hardware. Businesses can also use Tap to Pay on iPhone as a complementary solution to accept payments for needs like line busting or accepting payments at the table.

Fiserv, one of the leading payment technology providers in the world, launched digital issuance for debit cards:

Financial institutions can eliminate the wait that often goes along with receiving physical debit cards with the launch of new capabilities from Fiserv, a leading global provider of payments and financial services technology solutions. Cardholders now can access a new or replacement debit card electronically, allowing them to make in-store and online purchases immediately and eliminating the need to wait for a physical card to be mailed out, received and activated.

Houzz will allow contractors and professionals on its platform to get paid with Tap to Pay on iPhone

Houzz Inc, the leading platform for home remodeling and design, today introduced Tap to Pay on iPhone within Houzz Pro, the all-in-one business management and marketing software for residential contractors and design professionals. With Tap to Pay on iPhone, industry professionals can turn their phones into point-of-sale devices to quickly collect electronic payments in person. Pros simply open any invoice in Houzz Pro, choose a scheduled payment and select “Collect Payment”. Then they tap their iPhone to their client’s contactless credit card, debit card, or smartphone to accept the charge from a digital wallet.

ACI Worldwide and MagicCube Partner to Deliver Tap to Pay Acceptance for Mid- to Large Retailers

ACI Worldwide, a global leader in mission-critical, real-time payments, has teamed up with MagicCube, the creator of i-Accept™, to deliver secure and seamless contactless payments on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) smartphones and tablets using Tap to Pay—with or without PIN. The solution will provide mid-size and large retailers operating in complex environments with device-agnostic control and visibility of transaction data. This comes on the heels of MagicCube’s announcement extending its platform to big-box retailers.

i-Accept empowers financial services institutions to enable large merchants and retailers to accept contactless transactions through payment cards and mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay. Uniquely, i-Accept adapts to local card schemes and crypto wallets and supports Buy Now, Pay Later programs. It also allows for secure PIN capture on a COTS device screen without the need to scramble or shuffle the PIN entry device keys, making the transaction experience intuitive and efficient for the customer.

Stripe launches Tap to Pay on Android

Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, today announced support for Tap to Pay on Android, enabling businesses in six countries to accept contactless in-person payments using a compatible phone or tablet.

Square software turns Android devices into powerful payment technology

Square today launched Tap to Pay on Android for sellers across the U.S., Australia, Ireland, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The new technology empowers sellers to securely accept contactless payments with a compatible Android device, and at no additional cost.

Visa offers fascinating commentary on Tap to Pay (TSP). In the US, T2P penetration is now at 34%, up 700% compared to three years ago.

And tap-to-pay continues to be a powerful driver of engagement. Globally, 74% of all face-to-face transactions outside the U.S. are now taps. In the U.S., we’re at 34%, up 7x from three years ago and up more than 10 percentage points from last year.

A couple of highlights in the second quarter include U.S. quick service restaurants, where penetration surpassed 40% and in key metro areas across the United States, we continue to see great traction beyond the success in New York and San Francisco, L.A., Detroit, Seattle, San Diego and Ocean to Miami are all now over 40%.

Mass transit continues to be one of the best ways to get people used to tapping and we’ve set records. In the first half of 2023, we processed more than 745 million Visa Tap to Ride transactions globally, up 35% over the first half of last year. We’ve enabled 55 new transit systems, bringing our footprint to over 650.

The rising popularity of payments on the phone carries significant ramifications for different industries. Payment facilitators will face a major strategic risk if they don’t introduce the technology in time. T2P on phone will soon be table stakes and like in a poker game, a company needs to buy their way in before they can think about winning. The same logic applies to debit and credit card issuers. Enabling the addition of a card to a digital wallet is no longer enough. Instant provisioning to digital wallets will be a required standard. I believe that while card plastics still play a role in the payment world, but more and more transactions will take place on smartphones. Hence, any card that wishes to gain top of wallet must find a way to consumer phones.

Furthermore, the increasing adoption of T2P on phone represents a huge tailwind for device manufacturers. It’s very simple. The more popular T2P on phone is, the more phones these manufacturers will ship. Apple, in particular, will be among the biggest beneficiary. Even if consumers take time to upgrade hardware, Apple can still extract revenue from subscriptions and the App Store. That’s in addition to the 0.15% cut that Apple earns on every Apple Pay transaction.

Retailers that don’t allow T2P on phone will have no choice, but to follow the trend. The biggest name in this bucket is Walmart. They stubbornly refuse to accept contactless payments, except their own Walmart Pay. But when even the Costcos and the Aldis of the world accept T2P on phone and the trend is irreversible, I expect Walmart to concede and change their mind in 2-3 years.

What about PayPal? I believe this trend will make it more important for PayPal to push their branded credit/debit cards. Think about it this way. Even if PayPal announced support for T2P on phone with PayPal app tomorrow, consumers would still need to install the app on their phones. It takes only 2-3 finger taps to complete the task, but it’s by no means easy. On the other hand, Apple Pay and the Wallet app are ready to use from the get-go. No further installation required. That’s a significant disadvantage from PayPal’s perspective. To overcome that, they need to be involved in in-store transactions.

Because rewards are accumulated through a PayPal account, any point earned through the use of PayPal/Venmo cards in stores can spur activity on their apps. PayPal will have time to act as consumer behavior is often difficult to change. But they should make sure their cards are provisioned in digital wallets and their branded cards are in as many hands as possible.

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 25th March 2023

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 25th March 2023

What I wrote last week

Early 2023 musings

Business

Andrew Hollingworth – Ryanair: Low Cost Obsessed. “Why did he buy 10% of the whole industry in 2017? The reason he did is because the industry is consolidated, and he could see that the industry was then having and is still enjoying a level of permanent pricing power. Now that pricing power, it isn’t permanent in the sense that it bucks recessions or it bucks pandemics, but it is permanent in the sense if your market shares roughly stays the same and if participants of that market broadly behaves themselves. And I think that’s the conclusion that Buffett reached in 2017.”

Panera Bread tests Amazon’s palm-scanning technology in St. Louis. First Starbucks, now Panera. This technology has a lot of growth potential and I expect it to be adopted by more retailers in the future. However, to foster this growth, Amazon needs to have its brand associated with privacy and security, rather than scandals and data leaks.

How a wildly popular 5-foot-long promotion became a logistics nightmare for Subway

($) Starbucks’s New CEO Brews Coffee at Stores to Prepare for Role. If you invest in a consumer-facing business like Starbucks, you’ll want a CEO that is obsessed with customer satisfaction and listening to customers. The new CEO of Starbucks is doing that and he already found areas to improve.

Arm seeks to raise prices ahead of hotly anticipated IPO. “Arm charges royalties of about 1 to 2 per cent of the value of each chip sold based on its designs, according to Sravan Kundojjala, an analyst at TechInsights. According to the new business model being presented by Arm, royalties would be set according to the average selling price (ASP) of mobile devices rather than that of the chips. Some of Arm’s customers, including Apple, are both chipmakers and device makers, and have special licensing and royalty agreements with Arm. The iPhone maker is not involved in discussions about the change to Arm’s business model, said executives with knowledge of the company’s recent discussions.“

Hindenburg Research’s short report on Block/Square. An explosive report from the famed short seller on Square/Block. The report accuses the company of inflated operating metrics and widespread fraud on its platform. If what was said by Hindenburg is true, Block would surely be in serious legal trouble and could see their valuation tank because the company’s health isn’t as good as what it made out it be. There are two things worth noting. One is that Hindenburg has a great track record on their research. So far, I haven’t heard any of the targets of their reports successfully refute the findings. Plus, I don’t think Hindenburg risked lawsuits if they weren’t confident of what they found. The second issue is how Block chose to respond to the allegation. Not silence. Not rebuttal with facts and logics. But with a threat to pursue legal avenue. It really makes you think, doesn’t it?

Other stuff I find interesting

Commuting to work post-pandemic: Opportunities for health? A scientific paper on the health benefits that shorter daily commute brings. WSJ also published an article on the same topic. I’d save at least a couple of hundred dollars a month on rent if I relocate to West of Omaha and work from home 2-3 days a week. But my mental health and daily energy are paramount to me. So I instead choose to pay more for rent to be able to walk to work.

Why Japanese Web Design Is So… Different. I used to be baffled by the look and feel of some Japanese websites I visited. They look so heavy and littered with text and photos. A complete contrast to the minimalist style I often associate with the Japanese culture. This post sheds light on why and it makes sense to me

60 days to find a job or leave the country. A somber read on the H1B visa and the anxiety that H1B holders have to carry every day. The US is blessed to be an attraction to so many talented white-collar workers and entrepreneurs around the world. I don’t get why it has to be that difficult for people to build a life here. Give a green card to master-degree graduates from a US university. Raise the annual cap on green cards. Streamline the process. Just do something to make people’s lives easier. If you are in the position of power to do and don’t do anything, what good is it to have that power?

Wealthy Executives Make Millions Trading Competitors’ Stock With Remarkable Timing. I don’t believe for a second that a CEO-level person doesn’t have non-public information on a competitor. Nonetheless, I get why the number of insider trading charges is smaller than what we want. It’s not easy to prove and there is a fine-thin line to tread between catching insider traders and violating freedom to trade. And if there is a more obvious case, I’ll look towards Congress…

Should I Buy a House Now? An excellent article on whether one should buy a house right now, given the high mortgage rates. What makes me like the article is that it lays out the arguments for both sides and understands that buying a house is a personal decision and this decision is about more than just money. Hence, there is no blanke right or wrong answer. It varies from one person to another.

Stats

Bird raised more than $880 million in venture capital funding. The company is worth less than $40 million as of this writing.

29% of BNPL users first became interested in a BNPL service upon seeing it at checkout

An average US-based AirBnb host earned $14,000 in income from hosting in 2022

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 29th October 2022

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What I wrote last week

Uber plans to advertise to riders based on destination data

Business

Forget Netflix and Disney: a local streaming service is king in Indonesia. Vidio is winning because it understands the local audience and what they want from a streaming service.

ESPN, Formula 1 Extend Track With New Rights Deal. Formula 1 has seen its popularity soar high across the globe and in the US in the past two years. Some say that Netflix’s Drive To Survive elevated the sport’s standing. Others say that being one of a few sports organized during the pandemic to entertain folks at home helped too. Whatever the reason is, it’s undeniable that more American viewers know about Formula 1 than ever before. Viewership has never been this high. Next year, the country will host races in Las Vegas, Miami and Texas. There is a strong chance that an American driver, Logan Sergeant, will be on the grid too. The stars seem to be aligned well for the sport I love

($) The Fantasy of Instant Delivery Is Imploding. Some venture capitalists are poised to book millions of dollars in losses. “Along with entering too many markets, they overspent on marketing, with billboards in Times Square and European soccer and Formula One team sponsorships, former finance executives say. During Gopuff’s billion-dollar funding rounds, the co-CEOs had also sold portions of their stock to investors. (Rank-and-file Gopuffers were not allowed to sell shares unless approved by the company.) After they became multimillionaires, they purchased a Gulfstream jet and mansions five minutes from each other along the Intracoastal Waterway in Miami’s Golden Beach. Gola also bought Joe the Jeweler a home in Cherry Hill to replace the one he’d lost when his cash-for-gold business went bust.“

Exclusive: YouTube’s new redesign is built to feel more like TV. Some insights into how YouTube redesigned its User Experience. It must have been a massive undertaking and I’d love to be a fly on a wall of the meetings that led to decisions being made on the new design.

Square sells access to your inbox. No one seems to know if the law cares. Read how Block (Square) collects your email and sells access to said email to hundreds of sellers. The company also goes to great length to circumvent regulations pertaining to consumer privacy.

Apple on iPhones, Chips, Privacy, Working From Home and More | WSJ Tech Live 2022. I like Joanna Stern as a journalist and a tech reviewer. She is smart, funny and knows her stuff. This interview was really good and featured some hard-hitting questions that, unfortunately yet unsurprisingly, Craig and Joz evaded. Their response to Joanna’s question regarding EU mandate on USB-C was more nuanced than what was widely reported on the news. Their opposition to the Metaverse, a concept that Facebook/Meta champions, was noteworthy. Plus, I found it good Joz’s brief explanation on why ATT was introduced. Overall, if you have 30 minutes to spare, you really should check out this interview.

White House hammers economic issues with attack on ‘junk fees’ two weeks out from Election Day. While they are at it, they should talk to AirBnb CEO Brian Chesky on the outrageous fees that hosts on his platform charge to guests.

Other stuff I find interesting

Little rules about big things. Morgan Housel is one of my favorite writers and he struck gold again. “Most financial mistakes come when you try to force things to happen faster than is required. Compounding doesn’t like when you try to use a cheat code. Risk’s greatest fuels are leverage, overconfidence, ego, and impatience. Its greatest antidote is having options, humility, and other people’s trust.”

Voyage of the Gross Even though every other option is better, most of New York’s trash still goes into a hole in the ground. A fascinating piece that describes the journey of…trash in New York

($) The World’s Biggest Source of Clean Energy Is Evaporating Fast. “The water woes of China’s iconic mega-dam are part of a global hydropower crisis that is being made worse by global warming. From California to Germany, heatwaves and droughts have shrunk rivers that feed reservoirs. Hydroelectricity output fell by 75 terrawatt-hours in Europe this year through September — more than the annual consumption of Greece — and fell 30% across China last month. In the US, generation is expected to fall to the lowest level in six years in September and October. It’s a cruel irony that’s forcing utilities to reconsider the traditional role of hydropower as a reliable and instant source of green energy. Dams are the world’s largest source of clean energy, yet extreme weather is making them less effective in the battle against climate change.“

Stats

84% of maternal deaths in the US are preventable

“Only five percent of plastic waste generated by US households actually gets recycled”

One out of four US adults under 30 gets news on TikTok

The FDIC’s 2021 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households also found an estimated 4.5 percent of U.S. households were unbanked

Online spending in Southeast Asia is forecast to reach $200 billion in 2022 and $330 billion by 2025

Source: Reddit
Business

Square Online’s on-demand delivery

by MQDuong3 Comments on Square Online’s on-demand delivery

On Wednesday 1/12/2021, Square announced a new partnership that will enable Square Online orders in Canada to be delivered by DoorDash Drive. The new service in Canada is an extension of what Square launched in the U.S before. This is how it works: after a Square Online merchant receives an order, a DoorDash/Uber Eats courier (depending on whether you live in the U.S or Canada) will come to the merchant’s location, pick up the order and bring it to the customer. The customer can track the order through a link sent in a text message by Square. All orders with on-demand delivery will be commission-free. For every order, merchants will only pay a dispatch fee of $1.5 and a processing fee of $3.6 to Square.

Square on-demand delivery
Square on-demand delivery. Source: Square

At a closer look, the service is interesting to me. The sales pitch merchants will hear is very simple: work with us, become our merchant and you won’t have to waste valuable dollars on delivery staff or those expensive marketplaces with high commissions. A saving of $11 on every $50 order is highly attractive, but it’s not the whole story for merchants. Even though Square Online is free, anyone serious about operating a business will certainly need to upgrade to a higher tier. Who wants to build a brand with a “square.site” in their domain? Even a nobody like myself tries to secure a custom domain. To use a custom URL, merchants need at least a Professional plan at $12/month. Additionally, merchants can only enable PayPal checkout, product reviews or gift options with a Performance plan, which costs $26/month. Want advanced eCommerce stats regarding product performance or sales trend? Pay $72/month for the highest tier then. For Square, this means high-margin & recurring subscription revenue. For merchants, they need to think about what they may get themselves into.

Merchants must also be aware that using this on-demand delivery service with Square is different from being on Uber or DoorDash app. These marketplace apps are household names and likely bring more sales. That’s their primary value proposition. That’s how they can charge a commission of 30% per order. Since orders must be from merchants’ online stores, the task of generating sales and marketing now falls onto merchants who will have to choose between a bigger piece of a smaller pie and a smaller piece of a bigger pie. One thing that I have to say, though, is that by having customers place orders directly online, sellers can establish a precious relationship with customers, instead of ceding it to the likes of Uber or DoorDash.

Square Online pricing tiers
Square Online pricing tiers. Source: Square

What also interest me is the low dispatch fee. For every DoorDash Drive order, merchants normally pay a flat fee of $8. In this case, the dispatch fee is only $1.5. As the market leader in food delivery, DoorDash certainly has the bargaining power that they would not bend over backwards to work with Square at all costs. A drop of 81% in dispatch fees is massive, affecting DoorDash’s top and bottom line. Hence, I believe Square must compensate their partner in this agreement and make up for some of that loss. The question is: do the numbers add up for Square? It’s worth pointing out that a DoorDash Drive flat fee of $8 includes DoorDash’s standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.3 per order. In other words, a normal $50 DoorDash Drive order will result in a processing fee of $1.75 and a dispatch fee of $6.25. A cut of $1.5 per order from Square on-demand delivery means DoorDash will lose about $4.75 per order in revenue. Let’s assume Square compensates DoorDash $3 on every order with on-demand delivery. 1,000 such orders per month (around 3 per day) for 1,000 merchants would put a dent of $3 million on Square’s financials. Square claimed to have millions of sellers. A wide adoption of this on-demand delivery service wouldn’t be financially tenable. How does Square make this work?

My hunch is that Square’s target audience for this service is small, to begin with. Any merchant wishing to use this on-demand delivery service must have a Square Online store. We can exclude medium and large-sized merchants from this population as they must already handle their online activity. Those that are in need for Square Online should be mom-and-pop or local restaurants that do not have a website or really need an upgrade and a delivery service. This market segment should be small enough for Square to offer this service and make the numbers work. I suspect that the company wants to use this offering as an opening to get these merchants to install Square POS in stores. Once Square successfully has its POS installed, the more orders merchants have, the more revenue Square generates. What intrigues me is what Square would do if merchants had too many on-demand delivery orders? Would Square terminate the service or start charging more?

This service from Square offers great benefits to small merchants and really differentiates the company from its rivals like PayPal. I don’t have access to their financials and breakdown on this specific service, but my guess is that because the target audience is very small to begin with, it won’t move the needle much. Is this a threat to Olo? I don’t think it is. Olo’s bread and butter at the moment is franchises with multiple locations. Their business doesn’t hinge on who powers merchant’s websites. What matters is that Olo offers a centralized system helping merchants deal with the likes of Uber, GrubHub and DoorDash efficiently. Square’s on-demand delivery requires that merchants have to build online presence with Square. It’s a different game.

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 18th September 2021

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 18th September 2021

What I wrote last week

The importance of reading footnotes

Interesting articles on Business

Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt. The sentence “we’re not going what we say publicly we are” can be applied to any company to some extent. The problem for Facebook is that the trust-eroding incidents happen way too often for a company with grandiose ambitions. Facebook wants us to trust them and use some of the new services for Facebook Pay, but how can trust be formed when stuff like this happens? I am sure this won’t be the last time that Facebook got a PR black eye.

Intuit Agrees to Buy Mailchimp for About $12 Billion. “Mailchimp, established in 2001, is based in Atlanta and is still owned by founders Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius, according to its website. The company, which hasn’t taken any outside funding, began as a web-design agency and ran an email-marketing service on the side that later became its focus. Today it also offers other digital-ad services and customer-relationship- management tools. Already popular among small businesses, Mailchimp became something of a household name in 2014, when it advertised on the first season of the hit podcast “Serial.” The company now serves 2.4 million monthly active users, including 800,000 paying customers. Half of its customers are outside the U.S. It had about $800 million in annual revenue last year, a 20% rise from the year earlier.”

Square Offers Sellers and Consumers a New Checkout Experience with Cash App Pay. It’s a natural progression in my opinion. Square is competing with PayPal to be the Super App for consumer financial needs as well as the go-to partner for commerce. PayPal has enabled payments by QR Code and mobile wallet for a while. Now, Square and Cash App have it too.

Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show. “For the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how its photo-sharing app affects its millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company’s researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls. Expanding its base of young users is vital to the company’s more than $100 billion in annual revenue, and it doesn’t want to jeopardize their engagement with the platform. The features that Instagram identifies as most harmful to teens appear to be at the platform’s core. The research has been reviewed by top Facebook executives, and was cited in a 2020 presentation given to Mr. Zuckerberg, according to the documents.” Guess what Facebook chose to do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Adobe jumps into e-commerce payments business in challenge to Shopify. The race to be the force that powers eCommerce features some of the biggest firms in the world: Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, PayPal, Adobe and Square. If you notice, the first three have fulfillment capabilities. PayPal bought Happy Returns. So it’s only a matter of time the latter three build out their own fulfillment muscle.

Amazon Is Doing It. So Is Walmart. Why Retail Loves ‘Buy Now, Pay Later.’ “Shoppers spend more at Macy’s when they use installment plans offered through Klarna Bank AB, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette said on a recent earnings call. Klarna also is helping the retailer attract younger customers, he said. A desire to boost loan approvals was among the reasons Walmart in 2018 decided to end its decadeslong credit-card partnership with Synchrony Financial. Citigroup Inc. saw a sevenfold increase in the dollar amount of credit-card purchases converted to installment loans in July, compared with the same month a year prior, said Gonzalo Luchetti, head of Citigroup’s U.S. consumer bank.”

Other stuff I find interesting

One Woman’s Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia. I hope down the line, years from now, there will be folks who come across what Ksenia Coffman did and be thankful that she did. Same way as I do today.

What Makes Work Meaningful — Or Meaningless

Stats

“Close to half of all new U.S. gun buyers since the beginning of 2019 have been women”

55% of shoppers start their 2021 holiday season shopping before Thanksgiving

Source: JungleScout
Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 14th August 2021

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 14th August 2021

What I wrote last week

I wrote about Square’s acquisition of Afterpay

Business

In the Streaming Wars, Sony Stands on the Sidelines. I think for the short term, it makes sense for Sony to adopt a zig-when-everyone-else-zags strategy as building a streaming service is not Sony’s strength. Of course, no strategy is risk-free. If the big streamers can create content on their own and don’t need Sony any more, the iconic Japanese firm will be in deep trouble. It is a big bet from Sony, but as the market stands today, I don’t think the company has too many options left.

Rappi’s poor service opens the door for competition, but users aren’t leaving yet. Two things from this article struck me: 1/ even though they were horrible incidents with services and customer support, there hasn’t been a customer exodus from Rappi yet. 2/ RappiPay is the most profitable and fastest growing part of the company. If the challenging delivery gig doesn’t work out for the company, it can pivot to be a full blown fintech.

Amazon’s $1.5 billion air cargo hub starts operations. In the arms race to compete with other retailers or eCommerce platforms like Shopify, solidifying or even adding to their advantage in infrastructure and last-mile delivery is the right move for Amazon. Just look at the price tag of the cargo hub. If anyone wants to compete with Amazon on this front, that’s at least what they should expect to spend. And it’s a tall order for many companies. With that being said, having another cargo hub doesn’t guarantee success, so it will be interesting to follow this market in the near future.

Excerpt: How Google bought Android—according to folks in the room. The founders of Google, especially Larry, do seem to have excellent foresight in acquiring Android. I look forward to this book.

What I found interesting

John Gruber’s excellent post on Apple’s new “Child Safety” measures. The nuances and details laid out by John are very enlightening and important in understanding what Apple is doing here.

Reality has a surprising amount of detail. The devil is in the details

Archaeologists discover 4,000-year-old ancient city in Iraqi desert. Imagine you see now something that existed 4,000 years ago. That must be a surreal feeling.

Believing In Yourself is Overrated. This is Better. I am not really a fan of the “fake it till you make it” mentality. So I am very glad that Ryan Holiday wrote about it since he is far more eloquent than I can ever be. In short, the more effort you put in something, the more confident you are in yourself

Stats that may interest you

Momo has 60% of Vietnam’s mobile payments market

Amazon has 11% of the U.S ads market

Amazon spent $6.2 billion on video and music content in the first 6 months of 2021. To put it in perspective, Netflix spent a tad lower than $8 billion on content in the same period

Business

Why Square paid the big bucks for Afterpay

by MQDuong3 Comments on Why Square paid the big bucks for Afterpay

Last Sunday, Square announced that it was going to acquire Afterpay, the Buy Now Pay Later provider from Australia, in a $29 billion all-stock deal. A lot has been said about this merger and the one bear case that I have seen quite often is that people questioned whether Square could actually build its own BNPL in-house and is wasting $29 billion on this deal. Below is how I think about it.

Before we go further, let’s take a minute to talk about these two companies in general. Afterpay was founded in Australia in 2014 by Nick Mornar and Anthony Eisen. The company allows shoppers to break purchases into four interest-free installments paid every two weeks. Afterpay charges merchants 3-4 times interchange rate in exchange for customer leads and the underwriting of the loans. Merchant revenue constitutes the majority of Afterpay revenue while late fees make up around 9% of the top line. Currently available in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S, the UK and Canada, Afterpay is launching services in a few European countries such as France, Italy and Spain.

Originally started as a payment company with a little credit card reader, Square has grown leaps and bounds over the years to become a publicly traded financial company with over 30 different services, a banking license and over $126 billion in market cap as of this writing. Square’s revenue comes from different sources. Bitcoin makes up more than 50% of Square’s revenue, even though the gross margin is only around 2%. The company sells POS hardware at a cost to merchants and charges them for used services. If merchants and customers want to receive funds instantly, they must pay Square a small fee. Square also offers merchants loans from which it earns interests. Last but not least, there is interchange revenue from millions of transactions processed through Cash App.

Square used to have a BNPL option which was discontinued due to the effects of Covid-19. Then why the sudden change of heart and why wouldn’t Square reactivate Square Installments instead of paying an enormous sum for Afterpay? First of all, it’s about international expansion. While Square is available in some overseas markets, 85% of its GMV is from the domestic front. Meanwhile, more than 50% of Afterpay’s GMV originates from non-US markets. Acquiring Afterpay gives Square quick access to those international markets and reduces reliance on its home market. Plus, it’s not really easy to build up a BNPL service from scratch. In addition to having to acquire merchants and users, to be a BNPL provider, one has to deal with a lot of regulation hurdles. These are the things that currently Afterpay does better than Square in non-US markets. Hence, this purchase will help Square bypass all the trouble and acquire these skills quickly.

Second, customer acquisition. Afterpay’s main clientele includes Enterprise merchants wanting to leverage its popularity with consumers. On the other hand, while Square’s fastest growing segment is merchants whose GMV is higher than $500,000 a year, I doubt they are big enough that we can call them Enterprise. Hence, this acquisition enables the acquirer to move up the ladder and into a new market. The U.S is responsible for 62% and 43% of Afterpay’s active customers and GMV respectively. However, I’d say that in terms of reach to U.S consumers, Square is the far better company in this equation and has multiple touchpoints that it can use to acquire new users (Credit Karma tax, Cash App P2P, Bitcoin trading). Therefore, Square can definitely assist Afterpay in user acquisition. On the other hand, Afterpay gives Square access to the former’s high income customer base in coastal cities where Square isn’t as competitive as in the South.

Third, merchant acquisition and retention. Merchants pay BNPL providers because of not only consumer preferences, but also the new business that these providers bring due to their marketing reach. For instance, Klarna reported 22 million customer lead referrals in the U.S December 2020 alone. This extra revenue is what merchants, especially smaller ones, crave and are willing to pay for. With the Discovery tool from Afterpay, Square can strengthen the relationship with merchants and keep them in the ecosystem. The more merchants they have, the more their Cash App can appeal to consumers and the healthier the whole ecosystem will be. As a result, the addition of the Discovery tool is strategically beneficial to Square.

Last but not least, this merger is about the competition. Square ‘s main challenger in the race to become the Super Financial App is PayPal. Formerly a P2P platform and a primary checkout option on eBay, PayPal has transformed itself into a financial service and a formidable eCommerce player. It provides both merchants and consumers with multiple different services to facilitate in-store and online transactions. With PayPal, shoppers can pay in stores and online with QR Code, tap-to-pay, mobile wallet, debit cards, credit cards and PayPal Credit. In the past few months, the company has ramped up significantly efforts in cryptocurrency trading, one of the selling points of Cash App. Additionally, PayPal recently launched Zettle, its card reader, in the US, a direct threat to Square’s bread and butter. PayPal’s own BNPL, PayPal in 4, has facilitated $3.5 billion in GMV in a few markets since its launch in August 2020, $1.5 of which came in the last 90 days alone. As mentioned above, Square no longer has an installment service.

Outside of the U.S, PayPal and Klarna, the global leader in BNPL, share a lot of market overlap with Square and Afterpay. This acquisition of Afterpay gives Square an instant counterweight to these competitors. Could Square build its own BNPL muscles? Absolutely, I have no doubt about it. But it will take a lot of time and resources for Square to play catch-up. By the time the company could form a respectable presence in the markets, PayPal and Klarna would already sign more merchants, gain more market share and establish a purchase habit as well as brand name with consumers. It would be incredibly tough to overcome these advantages. With Afterpay, Square won’t have to start from scratch and can compete right away with their rivals.

In summary, from my perspective, there are legitimate reasons why Square made such a big splash. Afterpay brings to the table what Square needs for its growth plan and more importantly, it does so instantly. Of course, M&A deals fail all the time. Synergies are often overstated. Cultural clashes tend to be overlooked. Execution doesn’t materialize as expected. Management teams butt heads. All kinds of trouble can happen to derail a partnership. This one isn’t immune to such risks. But I hope that one day we can look back at this deal as an important milestone and lever that propels Square to incredible heights.

Figure 1 – An example of regulatory hurdles that a BNPL provider has to deal with. Source: Afterpay
Figure 2 – Afterpay can help Square move up market. Source: Square + Afterpay
Figure 3 – Afterpay can expand to coastal cities in the U.S and acquire higher income clientele. Source: Square + Afterpay
Figure 3 – Integration of Afterpay into Cash App. Source: Square + Afterpay
Fincog Overview of BNPL Providers, Ranked by Size
Figure 5 – GMV of Global BNPL Providers. Source: Fintechnews
Figure 6 – Klarna’s footprint. Source: Klarna

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 17th April 2021

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 17th April 2021

What I wrote last week

Hydrogen fuel cells vs Batteries

Uber may deliver marijuana in the future. Update on Credit Karma and Square

Business

Business Insider has a story on Larry Page, especially when he was determined to fire all Project Managers. Even a genius like him made a mistake, it seems. Don’t be too hard on yourself.

Why Delaware is the sexiest place in America to incorporate a company

Vimeo CEO talks about how the company reinvented itself from a video platform, another Youtube competitor to a B2B SaaS company. To be honest, as a consumer, I didn’t know that Vimeo transformed itself into a B2B SaaS player.

TikTok says that it has 100 million monthly active users in the US and is planning to bring new eCommerce-focused ads products

How the pandemic helped Walmart battle Amazon Marketplace for sellers. It’s exciting to see these two behemoths go at it in the near future. While Walmart has the luxury of stores scattered across the country, Amazon is a bigger and more experienced marketplace player.

Why It’s Misleading to Say ‘Apple Music Pays Twice as Much Per Stream as Spotify’. The best article on this particular subject that I have seen this week.

Amazon Plans Furniture Assembly Service to Catch Wayfair. I look forward to reading more about this initiative. While it sounds great as first, the reality may offer some questions that Amazon has to answer. For instance, Amazon is known for pushing its drivers to complete deliveries as quickly as possible. Asking drivers to take time to assemble products goes against that mantra. Hence, how much would Amazon be willing to slow down deliveries? How much would the premium fee offset the cost of such slowed deliveries?

What I found interesting

French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights. If there is a great network of trains; which I believe there is in France, this is a totally sensible decision.

Cloudflare Pages is now Generally Available

How to Create an Interactive AR Business Card Without Code

The vanishing billionaire: how Jack Ma fell foul of Xi Jinping. Jack Ma is one of the richest people on Earth and among the most influential business people. Yet, he has fallen from grace after what he said angered Xi Jinping. Another billionaire tried to lower his net worth to avoid trouble with the Chinese government. I am from that part of the world. I can tell you that no matter how rich a person or how big a Western corporation is, you don’t take your disagreement with the ruling party public. That’s one mistake you usually don’t come back from

Stats that you may find interesting

According to a new survey by National Restaurant Association, only 18% of delivery customers preferred to order from a 3rd-party app

Amazon Prime has 200 million members. 28% of purchases on Amazon were made in 3 minutes or less while 50% were made in 15 minutes or less.

Almost 20% of retailers’ sales in 2020 came from private labels

Business

Uber may deliver marijuana in the future. Update on Credit Karma and Square

by MQDuong2 Comments on Uber may deliver marijuana in the future. Update on Credit Karma and Square

Uber’s business reportedly hit a stride in March. CEO hinted at the prospect of delivering marijuana

In a filing today, Uber revealed that it had an astonishing month in March 2021, when its Gross Bookings hit the highest level in the company’s history. Uber said that its annualized bookings for Mobility and Delivery hit $30 and $52 billion, respectively, last month. I have mixed feelings about this. At the first glance, the filing seems like a trove of good news for Uber as the figures imply that its two main business segments are firing on all cylinders. Uber’s total bookings in 2018 and 2019 were $50 and $65 billion, respectively. If the annualized numbers above are realized in 10 months’ time, that will be an impressive achievement for a company of this size, given that our societies spent more than one year in a historic pandemic.

But IF is the important word here. To be honest, I don’t really know how the annualization is calculated. Did they multiply the bookings in March by 12? Or did they multiply the bookings in the best week in March by 52? I may be ignorant not to understand the nuances in these languages, but if you invest your hard-earned cash into a company, it’s healthy to be a bit paranoid.

Another news that came from Uber is that its CEO hinted at the prospect of delivering marijuana.

“When federal laws come into play, we’re absolutely going to take a look at it,” 

Source: The Verge

Two months ago, I wrote about Uber’s acquisition of Drizly, the market leader in liquor delivery in the US. Chief among the benefits of acquiring Drizly for Uber are the proprietary technology that can verify IDs and the team that knows how to navigate the complex legal systems at the state and county levels. These capabilities will be tremendously helpful to Uber if they decide to delivery marijuana. Even in the states that allow the cannabis delivery, consumers still have to show that they are old enough; which is the perfect use case scenario for what Uber gets from Drizly. Right now, marijuana for recreational purposes is only legalized in a handful of states and is still illegal at the federal level. Some Democrats are pushing to change that and I think that it’s just a matter of time before the change takes place. Even if marijuana for fun is legal on the federal level, there will still be a lot of work to be done on the local level as each state will have a different mandate. In that case, having a team that knows how to deal with regulations from county to county on liquor delivery like Drizly will come in handy. The recreational legal cannabis market in the US is estimated to reach $27 billion by 2024. Estimates like this are usually optimistic, but even if half of that estimate checks out, it will increase Uber’s Total Addressable Market significantly.

Source: Cannabis Business Times

Update on Credit Karma and Square

Last month, I wrote about Square’s acquisition of Credit Karma’s tax unit and potential benefits that the former can take from the latter

In essence, it benefits Square when customers have balance in their Cash App. The more balance there is, the more useful Cash App is to customers and the more revenue & profit Square can potentially earn. I imagine that once Credit Karma’s tax tool is integrated into Cash App, there will be a function that directs tax returns to customers’ Cash App. When the tax returns are deposited into Cash App, customers can either spend them; which either increases the ecosystem’s value (P2P), or deposit the fund back to their bank accounts. But if customers already direct the tax returns to Cash App in the first place, it’s unlikely the money will be redirected again back to a checking account. As Cash App users become more engaged and active, Square will look more attractive to prospect sellers whose business yield Square a much much higher gross margin than the company’s famous Cash App. 

Today, a user on Twitter noticed the new integration between Credit Karma and Square that would enable users to direct tax refunds straight to their Cash App account. Even though this is a logical move, how it will actually benefit Cash App remains to be seen as there hasn’t been any reporting on the overlap between Cash App and Credit Karma’s tax unit in terms of active users. Nonetheless, I look forward to seeing what Square brings to the market that stems from this acquisition.

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 20th march 2021

by MQDuong1 Comment on Weekly reading – 20th march 2021

What I wrote last week

The economics of a credit card

Business

Hy-vee CEO shared how Covid shaped the company’s operations moving forward

Why Amazon Fresh stores will likely rock a few boats. As its competitors do more shipping from their own stores, Amazon can get on level terms in that sense with having more stores of their own in strategic locations. Plus, if they can get these cashierless stores to run properly, they will be able to cut back a significant line item on the Income Statement, paid employees!

How Trader Joe’s $2 wine became a best-seller

Telegram App Is Booming but Needs Advertisers—and $700 Million Soon 

The new Google Pay repeats all the same mistakes of Google Allo

Apple brand loyalty hits all-time high as Samsung loyalty dives

Austin Rief: How Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75 million in 5 years

She Came to the US to Study With Only $300 in Her Pocket — Now She’s a NASA Director For the Mars Rover

What I found interesting

Does Atlantic Canada have a blueprint for rural revival in the post-pandemic era?

Facebook’s GDPR bypass reaches Austrian Supreme Court

Stats you may find interesting

BNPL grew by 215% year over year in Jan and Feb 2021. Total eCommerce spending reached $121 billion so far

As of February 2021, 45% of Square sellers accept online payments, up from 30% a year ago

56% of the people surveyed by AirBnb preferred domestic travel post-pandemic