Square launches an in-app payments SDK for iOS, Android, and Google's Flutter cross-platform mobile development SDK
Tom Krazit / GeekWire :
Context & Ripple Effects
This SDK is the latest step in Square's multi-year push to open its payments stack to outside developers: sellers have been able to build customized apps on top of its payment service since its 2016 platform launch, and last August the Square Reader SDK let vendors accept payment in their own apps by tying into Square Reader hardware.
The cross-platform angle is the new part. When Google shipped Flutter 1.0 in December, Square announced two Flutter payments SDKs alongside it, and Google's follow-up Flutter v1.2 release leaned further into in-app payment tooling — so Square is positioning itself as the default payments layer for a framework Google is actively promoting against native development.
First-order effects
- Mobile developers building native iOS and Android apps, or Flutter apps, can now embed Square payments directly in software rather than routing through Square-branded hardware, widening Square's reach beyond the reader-dependent integrations of the Reader SDK.
Second-order effects
- Google gains a marquee payments integration for Flutter at exactly the moment it is iterating the framework (v1.2's improved in-app payment tools), strengthening its cross-platform pitch to developers who would otherwise weigh native SDKs from rival processors.
Third-order effects
- If payments providers keep shipping first-class SDKs per framework, the choice of development stack starts shaping merchant payment relationships — cross-platform frameworks become distribution channels for financial infrastructure, not just UI tools.
The trend: Payment processors are racing to embed their APIs into every major mobile framework, turning cross-platform SDKs like Flutter into a battleground for developer mindshare.