Square, the little payment device that plugs into tablets the baristas use at your favorite hipster coffee shop, is attempting to raise more funding, according to a new report from CNBC.
Square, founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is trying to raise $200 million based off a $6 billion valuation--earlier this year, it was valued at $5 billion.
The sources are remaining anonymous because the deal hasn't officially gone through yet, but they claim a chunk of the funding is coming from Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC). If true, the funding from Singapore is part of a series of Asian investors putting their money into Silicon Valley, with start-ups like Lyft seeing a hefty amount of investment coming from across the Pacific.
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However, many industry experts see hurdles in the future for Square. Tech giants like Google, Amazon and PayPal are reportedly scrambling to come up with their own Square alternative, and Square's profit margins are kept low by payments to the major credit card companies-not a strategy smiled upon by Wall Street.
Still, the service remains enormously popular. The little white dongle helps nearly anyone, from ice cream truck drivers to yoga instructors, take credit or debit cards, when formally they could only accept cash or check. The company claims it processes transactions numbering in the tens of billions of dollars.