With Square Register’s Canadian Launch, Square Adds to Its Momentum Toward Bigger Sellers

Looking to move further upmarket from the small sellers it started with, Square Inc. on Wednesday announced it is launching its Square Register point-of-sale system in Canada.

Square is promoting the technology, which includes a screen facing the customer as well as one for the merchant, as suited to a time when customers and sellers alike want to maintain distance from each other. It’s also pricing Register at $899 Canadian, compared to $799 for the U.S. market, at a time when the exchange rate would indicate a higher price in Canada.

Square has been active in the Canadian market for nine years and says its base of larger merchants—the target market for Register—has grown by an average annual rate of 44% over the past five years in that country. The roster of active sellers in this category, which includes multi-location merchants, has expanded by more than 50% since the start of the pandemic, Square adds. The company did not release actual figures.

Square introduced Register four years ago with its launch in the United States, and now, with the Canadian introduction, offers the system in four countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia in addition to the U.S. and Canada. Square positions the system, which enables card and mobile payments, as easy to set up in a matter of minutes “out of the box.” The dual-screen product works with Square software enabling such functions as invoicing, e-commerce, and appointments.

“Businesses are ditching clunky payment machines and legacy technology because they want fast, reliable, secure, and intuitive hardware that looks professional. At the same time they need to manage growth and adapt easily to changing customer needs and market environments,” says Alyssa Henry, executive vice president at San Francisco-based Square, in a statement.

But as it moves into more geographies, the technology could also accelerate the company’s ambition to move toward larger sellers, which can generate bigger transaction volumes. This is a direction Square has been moving in for some time. It reported last month merchants accounting for more than $125,000 in annual gross payment volume made up 65% of the company’s dollar volume, compared to 55% a year earlier. Sellers doing half a million or more accounted for 35% of Square’s volume, up from 26% in the same period last year.

That tendency toward bigger merchants, though, could run into stiff competition in Canada, experts say. “In terms of competitiveness, there are quite a few players serving the Canadian market that all vie for their share,” says Trevor Forbes, director of market intelligence at The Strawhecker Group, an Omaha-based research firm. “Many of the same major POS players from the U.S. are serving Canada, such as [Fiserv Inc.’s] Clover, and Square has offered other POS solutions prior to the Register product in Canada since 2012. TouchBistro, a major restaurant POS system is based in Toronto, and has served 29,000 restaurants globally.”