Square To Launch Square Loans In Australia For SMEs

Square plans to launch its lending product, Square Loans, in Australia. The offering assists small companies with expansion by providing them with easy and expedient access to funds, according to a post on Square’s website on Wednesday (April 14).

Square says companies will receive a single clear upfront loan charge that will be repaid without intervention as a fixed portion of daily card sales on Square. As a result, companies repay more if sales are formidable, and they repay less if business decelerates.

Samina Hussain-Letch, head of Industry and Payments at Square Australia, noted in the announcement that Australian small companies have traditionally encountered large challenges in terms of accessing formal kinds of funding.

“They’re often forced to pore over piles of paperwork, provide years of financial information and put up personal guarantees that can be riddled with red tape,” Hussain-Letch said in the announcement.

As of the first rollout of Square’s loan offering in the United States, Square says that it has helped with an excess of $8 billion U.S. dollars in financing to over 435,000 small companies.

The company says that it “expects to see similar momentum in Australia as local businesses continue turning to the platform as the engine to run their operations.”

In separate news, hummgroup recently launched its buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution, which is meant for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), according to a February announcement. The offering is referred to as a BNPL solution named hummpro.

hummgroup CEO Rebecca James said that the hummpro offering would be able to help the millions of small companies which “contribute substantially to GDP across Australia and New Zealand” to recover their sales and keep the economy going.

“Our research shows that SMEs across Australia and New Zealand are dissatisfied with their traditional credit card and overdraft solutions, so we’ve built a product that removes the hoops they normally have to jump through to access finance,” James said in the announcement.