Fresh from stepping down from his position as chief executive officer of Twitter Inc., Square Inc. CEO Jack Dorsey today announced that Square is changing its corporate name to Block Inc.

In a move reminiscent of Facebook’s decision to change its name to Meta Platforms Inc., the decision is said to reflect Square’s shift from a payments company into a broader company with multiple businesses — in this case, Block reflecting “building blocks.” Those businesses include not only the Square payments service, but also Cash App, Tidal — the music streaming service the company acquired for $297 million in March — and a financial services division focused on bitcoin called TBD54566975.

The name change to Block is apparently to create room for further growth with an overarching ecosystem of many businesses united by their purpose of “economic empowerment.”

“We built the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs,” Dorsey said in a statement. “Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.”

Although the primary businesses that now reside under Block will mostly not be seeing a change of name, there is one exception. The Square Crypto service will now be called Spiral.

The name Block “has many associated meanings for the company — building blocks, neighborhood blocks and their local businesses, communities coming together at block parties full of music, a blockchain, a section of code and obstacles to overcome,” the company further explained.

For the vast majority of users of Square services, the change will go unnoticed, as it had when Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta. Neither company is new to the trend of renaming their corporate names, with Google arguably setting the trend by changing its name to Alphabet Inc. in 2015.

The move comes as Square, now Block, has seen its revenue growth slow thanks to lower cryptocurrency volumes. The fundamental payments business is still strong, having seen a 43% year-over-year transaction volume increase in the previous quarter.

Square also announced in August that it had entered into an agreement to buy Australian “buy now, pay later” firm Afterpay Ltd for $29 billion. Whether Afterpay keeps its name after the acquisition is completed is unclear, but it is intended to be integrated into Squares’ Cash App and seller ecosystems.

Photo: Marco Verch/Flickr