Jack Dorsey's payments company Block expands corporate card service to the UK

LONDON — Block, the payments company owned by tech billionaire Jack Dorsey has launched its corporate card service in the U.K. in a bid to deepen its expansion into the country and take on big incumbents like American Express.

The firm's business-focused payments arm, Square, told CNBC that it opened registrations for its Square Card product in Britain late Wednesday, marking the first time Block has expanded its business card offering outside North America, where it first launched in 2019.

Currently available in the U.S. and Canada, Square Card is a free business spending card that reduces the time between merchants making a sale and having funds available to spend. It competes with offerings from the likes of American Express and Citigroup.

Samina Hussain-Letch, executive director of Square U.K., said the launch of the firm's corporate card product in the U.K. would give merchants speedier access to funds and help them more easily manage their daily expenses.

"When designing this product we went back to our mission of making commerce easy," Hussain-Letch told CNBC. Based on internal research Square found that small and micro businesses "prefer their funds to be consolidated in one place," she said, adding that real-time access to funds was also an important factor.

In the U.K., Square Card will come up against local banking giants like Lloyds and NatWest. It will also heighten competition for some well-funded European fintech players, including Pleo, Payhawk and Spendesk.

Hussain-Letch highlighted The Vinyl Guys as an example of an early adopter of its corporate card offering. The vehicle branding and signage printing shop based in Stafford used the corporate card as part of a testing phase with domestic U.K. customers.

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