[joshuawright11]

IMO Square has great looking hardware but their software is pretty mediocre and unattractive. The Stripe guys are killing it on the software front recently, wondering if square should continue pushing hard on the hardware front when stripe is eating their online lunch.

[acchow]

Stripe is eating their online lunch? They go to different cafeterias and eat different cuisines

[snuxoll]

My problem with Square is they are so focused on their ecosystem that they basically ignore anyone that doesn't operate a traditional retail store or restaurant.

I'm really excited about Stripe Terminal as a developer, and I think they can eat Square's lunch by focusing on purely being the payment intermediary and letting 3rd parties develop solutions around their SDK (which supports web browsers in addition to mobile platforms, unlike Square which only supports iOS and Android and just recently divorced itself from requiring the Square app too).

[lyricalpanda]

The first statement is a bit unfair. Square is pretty generic now, but of course a one size fits all solution isn't going to cut it for every case. I don't think that is a negative thing to ignore smaller markets that aren't as profitable if they dedicate tens/hundreds of millions of dollars towards these niche markets.

You misunderstand what strengths Square and Stripe both have. Stripe is a pure API/SDK that integrates with third-parties for everything other than payments.

Square has all those "third-parties" services bundled in to make it a much smoother experience for merchants. Payroll? Analytics? Dashboard? Everything is right there for you at Square. Stripe? They just link you to a bunch of third party sources.

Ultimately it boils down to: Stripe is geared towards more tech-savvy customers or those who can afford development costs for all these custom integrations + working with 3rd parties. Square is geared towards people who want it all in one ecosystem and don't need a lot of customization.

Stripe won't "eat" Square's lunch when it comes down to the base use-case of a simple merchant wanting an easy onboarding experience and taking payments. Stripe is anything but that. And for larger merchants you have to worry about what third-party services you integrate with Stripe - what if one of them goes under? Switching third-party services might be a huge pain. You don't have to worry about that with Square. Not to mention that first-party services always are better than third-party services. Square can always come up with better services to offer its customers because it has access to all the data. Third-party services are limited to what they can get via an API.

And as of right now, Square is actually beating Stripe on the SDK game with the release of ReaderSDK.