In Brief:
- Digital payments giant Square announced its rebranding to the name Block.
- The rebranding confirms Square’s rising interest in blockchain technologies.
- The name will be officially changed to Block on or about December 10, 2021.
Digital payments firm Square announced it is changing its brand name to Block, a reference to the firm’s strong interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency technology.
According to the press release, after satisfying all applicable legal criteria, the legal name “Square, Inc.” is planned to be officially changed to “Block, Inc.” on or about December 10, 2021.
The renaming comes just two days after Block’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, quit the CEO position of Twitter.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder, and CEO of Block stated, “We built the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs. Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.”
The company’s numerous businesses including music streaming service Tidal, Cash App, TBD, and Square, will be unified under the new brand name, which has been in the works for almost a year. These companies will not have any organizational changes though.
Square added that “Block references the neighborhood blocks where we find our sellers, a blockchain, block parties full of music, obstacles to overcome, a section of code, building blocks, and of course, tungsten cubes.”
For the time being, the firm’s ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange will remain “SQ.” Square’s crypto subsidiary, Square Crypto, will be renamed Spiral affirming its focus on bitcoin.
The announcement comes about a month after Facebook rebranded to Meta to reflect CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s aim to create a virtual environment termed the metaverse. Square didn’t forget to indirectly refer to Facebook by starting its Twitter thread with “Not to get all meta on you…” before going into detail about the Block rebrand.
