Aiming for more retail deals, Square adds partnerships VP
Former PayPal VP of retail marketing Alex Petrov will be responsible for finding more integrations for the hot mobile payments startup.
For a mobile payments platform whose future success is tied to its ability to be accepted by as many retailers as possible, a company like Square has to have someone leading the charge toward such deals.
That's why Square -- the San Francisco startup founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey -- has just hired its first vice president of partnerships. It said today that it has tapped Alex Petrov, former PayPal vice president of retail marketing, for the job. Petrov also previously held the position of vice president of consumer brands at supermarket giant Safeway.
It will be Petrov's job to represent Square to retailers big and small. Certainly, the company hopes it can score more national and regional retailers that can offer large-scale integrations. Square's partnership with Starbucks, which brought the payments service into the coffee behemoth's 7,000-plus stores, has been its biggest deal to date, and there's little doubt it would like more deals like that. Still, Square is already processing more than $10 billion in annualized transactions, and most of that is coming through small retailers and individuals. If Petrov is successful, though, that number could skyrocket.