Intuit and Square have often been framed as budding competitors.
That characterization came to an end yesterday, as the two companies announced a new partnership aimed to make it easier for clients of both Square and Intuit’s QuickBooks accounting software to streamline transaction data. As AllThingsD points out, clients who want to integrate such data from square Register or Square Market into their QuickBooks accounts need to do so manually.
“It’s pretty complimentary; an extension of what QuickBooks already does,” Dan Wernikoff, SVP and GM of Intuit Small Business Financial Services, told TechCrunch.
How much overlap Square and Intuit have in terms of customer base is unclear, and neither company clarified in comments to AllThingsD or TechCrunch. However, AllThingsD noted that around three-quarters of QuickBooks customers are “service-oriented, invoice-based businesses,” which are “traditionally not the Square target customer set.” That would still leaver around a million QuickBooks businesses that are retail-centric, Wernikoff indicated to the source.
Square and Intuit have been viewed as competitors in the past largely due to Intuit’s Go Payment POS solution. However, Wernikoff tried to downplay that angle in his talk with TechCrunch.
“All of us have been at chapter one of mobile payments, a very basic phase focused on emulating a point of sale device,” Wernikoff said. “Chapter two is that each of us is starting to move in different directions.
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While Intuit has acknowledged that its deal with Square is a “commercial arrangement,” neither company disclosed financial details. The Square-QuickBook integration will launch in the U.S. only on November 19, at which point pricing will be revealed.
