Square’s Latest Canadian Move Should Boost Square Stock

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Square (NYSE:SQ) launched its Square Terminal, which accepts payments and issues receipts, in Canada on Aug. 8, about ten months after launching the all-in-one device in the U.S. The company’s latest Canadian move is excellent news for the owners of SQ stock. 

This Market Overreaction Is Just One More Reason to Buy Square Stock

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It Meets a Need

At the time of Square Terminal’s U.S. launch, Square’s head of hardware, Jess Dorogusker, said this about the terminal:

“Even if you do get accepted by a traditional terminal provider to accept payments, you typically sign up for a contract that is at best opaque and probably not so fair. There’s a teaser rate, there are monthly fees, there’s a variety of other fees, different cards cost different amounts,” Dorogusker told Fast Company in October 2018. 

“Square Terminal is our way to fix basically all of those things,”  Dorogusker added.

With Square Terminal, small businesses receive  a sleek design and complete functionality, including a built-in printer, a battery designed to last an entire day, and Wi-Fi and Ethernet compatibility. 

It’s a dream product for merchants and service providers. 

Dentists are using the terminals to explain a patient’s entire bill in their treatment rooms, avoiding the lack of privacy the waiting room entails. 

SQ launched the terminal a year ago, unsure how its customers would use it.  

“What’s exciting to me about it is that it kind of resonates back to when we first started the company and we built the reader,” SQ CEO Jack Dorsey said last October. “We had some idea of who would use it, but really no idea how it would end up being used. This has very similar properties where we’ll probably be surprised at how people use it.”

Ten months later, it’s clear that, in a positive trend for SQ stock,  businesses have used it a lot because Square launched the terminal in Canada. 

Multiple Functions

At the Canadian launch of Square Terminal, Dorogusker, Square’s head of hardware, told reporters that the portable terminal provides small- and medium-sized businesses with the ability to manage inventory, send invoices, record deposits, manage payment histories, and generate reports about their companies.

The product eliminates the need for shopkeepers to deploy a slew of iPads, smartphones and tablets, to successfully operate their businesses. 

“It’s so hard running a business. The last thing you want to consider is redoing your equipment or system so when something works you don’t want to touch it because you need to focus on your customers,” Jack Dorsey said at the August launch. “So [the terminal] it’s the consideration of a new system and breaking through the noise of the day-to-day operations.

For the terminal’s upfront cost of C$299, a 2.65% transaction charge, and a C$0.10 per debit card charge, merchants get an easy-to-use terminal that doesn’t require expensive technology or long-term contracts to operate.

Offering swipe, insertion, or tap-to-pay processing, Square Terminal is a solid product that will enable SQ to compete against Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) and Moneris Solutions, Canada’s largest payment processor. That’s definitely positive for SQ stock. 

The fact that the device has moved into Canada after less than a year after its U.S. launch says all you need to know about its popularity in the U.S.

The Bottom Line on SQ Stock

Between Terminal, Cash App, and Square Capital, SQ is building a group of innovative products and services that look poised to continue to push Square stock higher. 

I’ve been a fan of Square’s since early in 2018. It’s one of the best fintech disruptors, in my opinion, public or private. In the long-term, I don’t think anyone can go wrong by buying SQ stock.

As a Canadian, I hope SQ continues to shake up the financial-services industry north of the 49th parallel. We could use it. 

At the time of this writing, Will Ashworth did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

Will Ashworth has written about investments full-time since 2008. Publications where he’s appeared include InvestorPlace, The Motley Fool Canada, Investopedia, Kiplinger, and several others in both the U.S. and Canada. He particularly enjoys creating model portfolios that stand the test of time. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

 


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2019/08/squares-latest-canadian-move-should-boost-square-stock/.

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