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Square, a company with many years headstart, trades at a high multiple, and has many more integration points into commerce than WhatsApp does currently, trades
by xkjkls 8y ago
Square, a company with many years headstart, trades at a high multiple, and has many more integration points into commerce than WhatsApp does currently, trades at a market cap of $27 billion.
Given that Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, trying a low probability strategy of trying to compete for market share where the best case scenario is $27 billion in value seems foolish.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoSquare and Whatsapp are basically not comparable business entities.
- xkjkls 8y agoIf WhatsApp decided to move to payments, it is the closest analog.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoNo, square is fundamentally geared towards long-tail consumer retail, not peer-to-peer payments, and it's very credit card oriented. They still would not even be comparable.
- xkjkls 8y agoWhat is the Cash app then?
- cheeze 8y agoAn okay alternative to Venmo. The UI is definitely worse (IMO) and they've done a piss poor job at tying users to identities more than using phone numbers. Nobody I know uses Cash App except in exceptional cases. I have to double and triple check usernames to make sure I'm not sending money to the wrong person. The Cash app is a pretty small percentage of Square's revenue. Square isn't much more than a credit card processor for small businesses IMO.
- QML 8y agoWouldn’t the closest analog be WeChat? Square isn’t a messaging platform.
- xkjkls 8y agoI was referencing the guy above who suggested WhatsApp become a commerce platform, and why that is hard. WeChat definitely does many of those things, but that’s far from it’s only monetization Model