Square, a payments firm led by Twitter-co-founder Jack Dorsey, has reportedly decided not to move forward with the idea of creating its own credit card.
The startup was even testing prototype cards among its employees, but later decided to abort the program as the hurdles became too high, according to Fast Company.
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The card, which reportedly featured an all-black design free of any logos, was more of debit card than a traditional credit card.
The company planned to link the card directly to a checking account instead of dealing with a financial partner to handle transactions, according to the report.
Square also intended to substitute the usual paperwork of a card with simple digital receipts, notifications and transaction tracking tools.
According to Fast Company, Square dropped the project because if the product had been released it would have put the company in direct competition with Visa, MasterCard and the banks that it partners with currently for its merchant card processing services.
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By GlobalDataAlso, Square would have been subject to much more strict financial regulation for directly handling consumers’ money.
