Finance News

Block co-founder explains how the fintech giant avoided ‘death by Amazon’

BARCELONA — In 2014, Amazon launched a product that sounded strikingly similar to something already on offer from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s payments company Square, which is today known as Block.

It was called Amazon Register, and it would let small businesses accept credit using a smartphone or tablet computer, just like Block’s technology. There was one key difference, though: Amazon offered processing fees of as low as 1.75%, compared to the 2.75% rate from Block.