Stripe Versus Square: Is Competition Coming?

Possibly. The historically online payments brand, Stripe, is now going brick-and-mortar with their newest product, Terminal. And Square, who largely dominates the offline storefront space, would seem to be the most likely competitor.

According to Stripe Co-founder and President John Collision, however, competition may be present in some areas, but not all. Stripe targets companies who will “geek out about APIs with us,” said Collision via Techcrunch. Their aim is more towards “tech-savvy businesses.”

Additionally, according to the same article, Stripe Terminal is built specifically for online storefronts looking to establish an offline presence – a niche seemingly more specific than Square’s broader customer base.

“The goal here is to help them unify their online and offline customer data and experiences,” said Collision. And Stripe plans to accomplish this through SDKs and APIs that enable a more customized checkout experience, cloud-based hardware management and a more unified payments interface, according to the company’s blog post.

And Stripe isn’t the only brand going offline. Shopify also made an announcement bridging online and offline commerce for their clients last fall and announced plans for a new reader earlier this year.

Are we seeing a possible trend here? Only time will tell.

As for Stripe, their new “programmable point-of-sale” is currently in beta testing mode in the U.S. only, according to the same company blog.