Google, Square Join Government SMB Tech Initiative

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The Small Business Administration (SBA) just announced some big names joining its Small Business Technology Coalition (SBTC).

Google, Square, LinkedIn and several others were revealed to have joined the SBTC, launched by the SBA earlier this year. The group is a public-private partnership to offer small businesses in the U.S. access to training resources from the technology industry.

When it first launched, the SBTC named Microsoft, Facebook, Salesforce, Amazon, Box, LegalZoom and Zenefits as its initial partners.

On Wednesday (Aug. 3), the Small Business Administration named 11 new partners in total. In addition to the aforementioned firms, Bench, Canvas, Dash Data, Gusto, Intuit, Paychex, Thumbtack and Yelp are on board with the initiative.

“With the addition of these partners, SBA’s Small Business Technology Coalition continues to grow its unprecedented collection of educational and training resources from the world’s most iconic technology companies,” said SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet in a statement. “These partners play a vital role as we work to educate entrepreneurs on the range of resources and technology available to help them connect to customers, scale and conduct business safely anywhere in the world.”

The SBTC provides webinars, whitepapers and other resources for small business owners to gain information about the latest technologies they could use. The initiative offers an array of topics for training and education, including payments, back-office operations, online commerce and more.

PYMNTS tracks small businesses’ adoption of these technologies in our SMB Technology Adoption Index. The latest index, which is released quarterly, revealed the top reasons behind EMV adoption by small businesses, the largest concern small business owners have today and their struggle to adopt mobile payment support.