Square building new Bitcoin-inspired financial services business

Square is creating a new business line to help developers build financial services products focused on Bitcoin, according to tweets from Chief Executive Jack Dorsey.

Square is “building an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services,” Dorsey tweeted Thursday, adding that the new business doesn’t yet have a name. “Our primary focus is #Bitcoin,” he said. A company spokeswoman declined to share further details.

The San Francisco-based digital payments company has three business lines: Cash App, Square Seller products and the music-streaming service Tidal, which it acquired earlier this year. Dorsey has long been interested in transforming Square into a broader organization with a number of standalone units.

Dorsey also has been a huge supporter of Bitcoin over the years, and announced last month that Square is building a hardware wallet for the cryptocurrency. The company also announced in February that Bitcoin now makes up 5% of its holdings.

“Like our new #Bitcoin hardware wallet, we’re going to do this completely in the open,” he tweeted Thursday. “Open roadmap, open development, and open source.”

Bloomberg News
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