‘Build with Square’ lets businesses monetize on a single platform

Square is introducing ‘Build with Square,’ which lets businesses monetize their online and in-store efforts entirely through Square.

A collection of new APIs, Build with Square offers solutions from beginning to end. A new Register API allows for more customized point-of-sale solutions, and lets sellers integrate their third-party point-of-sale hardware with Square so they can accept both EMV and Apple Pay.

The E-Commerce API lets users easily sell goods via a self-hosted website. It’s a means to grow the digital footprint for physical storefronts as well as those who sell exclusively online. It also helps sellers with stores utilize Square as a back-end processor for all transactions, so they don’t have to fiddle with getting payment via multiple sources.

Square says “independent businesses have been poorly served by existing commerce

solutions, which require them to laboriously piece together hardware, software, and payments services from many different vendors.”

That may be true — and Square may be one of the best solutions for bridging those gaps. It may also be a significant blow to those in the disparate realm of point-of-sale hardware and online commerce solutions, where nothing seems to flow cohesively. Those like Clover and Stripe should take notice.