Square inks deals with Vend, TouchBistro to reach more merchants

Square is teaming with point-of-sale providers Vend and TouchBistro in a bid to open up the Square platform to more users.

Through the partnerships, merchants using POS software from Vend or TouchBistro can opt to use Square's chip-card reader, payments processing platform, or financial software without getting locked into the Square ecosystem.

Square first teased plans to unshackle its hardware and software platforms in March, so today's announcement really is about Square making good on that promise.

More recently, the San Francisco-based payments company partnered with Upserve, a startup that provides payments processing and software for restaurants, to create an extended network of merchants eligible to borrow from Square's lending program, Square Capital.

Both initiatives support Square's overall growth strategy, which is to sell payment processing and other services to merchants that don't run its core software. Specifically, with Vend and TouchBistro, Square is looking to make inroads with larger retailers and restaurants that require specialized software systems, which Square doesn't offer.

Square says "select" TouchBistro and Vend merchants can integrate with Square starting Aug. 29, with the full rollout expected in the coming weeks.

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