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Comment by qq66 | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing what people will dismiss as "unsustainable revenue models." A business that makes money from every single user, and does so in a way that scales exactly linearly with usage? "Unsustainable!"

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You are correct. I mis-spoke. I should have said "profitability models" not revenue models.

Now, you seem to have interpreted that statement correctly anyways. So do you have any evidence whatsoever that Square "makes money" (ie. turns a profit) from "every single user"?

I would consider "using" Square to be making a transaction through Square. Square takes 2.75% of that transaction regardless of its size. So yes, Square makes money from every user.

His point is that he thinks that many people with the square card reader never read any cards. He's right - unless there's a government subsidy that I don't know about, Square does not make money from every user.

I appreciate the help, but that's not actually my point. My point is that Square does not keep the 2.75%. It is doled out as cost of goods sold in the form of interchange fees back to card networks and issuing banks. No one has any idea how little of that fee that Square keeps but I would guess around 0.2 - 0.5% at most.

And do you know the breakdown of that 2.75%? Most of it does not go to Square, it goes to card processing networks and issuing banks. Do you know what those are?

Also in your "leaked slide" where "they're burning cash at an enormous rate" one can clearly see that revenues exceeds costs. ie. making money?!

Do you have any idea how to read a chart? Do you see that "operating loss" light red colored area there? If the slide is to be believed, the aggregate cost of Square's transactional fees (the orange part) and their operating costs (the dark red part) is higher than their revenue (the blue part). That means they are operating at a loss of about $150k per day as of April of 2012. And it's accelerating. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

As for the source, the slide was on TC and the report is available with a subscription at https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome. I can't verify it, but everything I have seen/know about their revenue model makes it look genuine.

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