Square launches gift cards(news.cnet.com) |
Square launches gift cards(news.cnet.com) |
(it also seemed like an obvious feature ever since Square launched. Running loyalty and gift cards is one of the ways to get out of the 1-2% gross margin ghetto for just processing visa/mc, which is one of the big problems with a payments startup. Even if you process hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions, it's hard to make enough from the fraction of a percent left over after variable costs to cover your fixed costs, let alone turn a profit. Yet, even on day one, you need huge scale and high reliability.)