Square COO Rabois steps down, CFO Friar named interim replacement

January 25, 2013 | By Jason Ankeny

Square COO Keith Rabois is leaving the fast-growing mobile payments startup. Square CFO Sarah Friar will serve as acting COO while the firm searches for a permanent replacement.

Keith Rabois

"Today I accepted Keith's resignation from Square," said founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. "When he joined, we had fewer than 30 employees and under 1000 active merchants. Today, over 3 million individuals and businesses are able to accept credit cards with Square, processing over $10 billion annually. We couldn't have done it without him, and we wish him well in his next opportunity."

Rabois joined Square in 2010 after executive stints at companies including PayPal and LinkedIn--a high-profile Silicon Valley angel investor, he also serves on several boards, including Yelp. Insiders told AllThingsD that disagreements with Dorsey prompted Rabois' exit; in a statement, Rabois said "Leading our amazing crew has been the most rewarding professional journey of my life. I am forever grateful to Jack, for his confidence in me and to each and every member of the team for allowing me to learn from them. But every day matters. And it is better at this point for me to be doing something different every day." Rabois added he will share details on his next endeavor in the near future.

Square's signature Card Reader enables businesses to swipe credit and debit cards through a dongle plugged into a smartphone or tablet audio jack. Square charges a flat fee of 2.75 percent on all purchases, lower than conventional credit and debit card transactions, and promises no contracts, monthly fees or hidden costs. The reader unit is now available for purchase in 30,000 retail locations nationwide. Partners include Walmart, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Target, Walgreens, AT&T (NYSE:T), Best Buy and Staples.

Last year, Starbucks Coffee Company began accepting the Square Wallet application for iOS and Android devices in roughly 7,000 stores across the U.S. Square Wallet links to a consumer's debit or credit card to process transactions--the app generates a QR code scanned by a Starbucks digital reader terminal, and automatically transmits a digital receipt when the purchase is complete. Square Wallet also offers access to Starbucks menu information, store hours and locations and the user's transaction history.

Starbucks also invested $25 million in Square's Series D financing round, which eventually reached $200 million in total, valuing the startup at $3.25 billion. In addition, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz joined the Square board.

For more:
- read this AllThingsD article