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Re:Square files for IPO by abalone on Wednesday October 14, 2015 @08:29PM (#10390524)
> I can't see any scale where they are profitable

What are your calculations? Square, Stripe et al are making massive margins on debit card transactions right now. Thanks to recent regulations (the Durbin amendment), the average debit interchange fee is 0.89% all included.[1] Square charges 2.75%. That means they're netting around 1.5-2% on debit transactions. That's huge for a payment processor.

Sure, they have higher costs for credit cards, and their easier sign-up probably means more losses from seller-side fraud. But if they can control fraud then 2.75% is still a healthy gross margin even on credit transactions. And it's crazy big margin for debit.

[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-average-i...

Re:Square files for IPO by untog on Thursday October 15, 2015 @12:46AM (#10391405)
What percentage of their transactions are debit transactions, though?
Re:Square files for IPO by abalone on Thursday October 15, 2015 @08:57AM (#10392829)
A lot. In the U.S. debit is over 40% of transactions and growing.

http://www.nilsonreport.com/upload/Nilson_Purch_Vol_2013.May...

Re:Square files for IPO by untog on Thursday October 15, 2015 @05:03PM (#10395978)
Those aren't Square specific numbers, though.