[Pedestrian]

Square takes all of Oakland's Uptown Station
By Blanca Torres – Reporter, San Francisco Business Times
Dec 20, 2018, 3:56pm PST Updated Dec 20, 2018, 8:08pm EST

Oakland finally landed a major tech tenant with digital payments company Square Inc. agreeing to lease all of Uptown Station at 1955 Broadway.

The building, which has 356,000 square feet of office space, is the same property that Uber previously owned, but sold in 2017.

The lease is the first time since 2016 that a tenant has inked a deal for more than 100,000 square feet in Oakland.

Square will keep its headquarters in the Mid-Market neighborhood of San Francisco, where it recently added more office space earlier this year. The company plans to move about 2,000 employees into the Oakland space starting in late 2019.

Earlier this year, Square added 104,135 square feet to its Mid-Market headquarters to occupy a total of 469,056 square feet in 1455 Market St., a 1 million-square-foot office building.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey started Square in 2009 with 10 employees. The company’s technology enables business owners to process credit card payments and makes a credit card reader for cell phones. The company reported revenue of $809 million in 2017 and now has about 2,300 employees in San Francisco, Canada, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

The Oakland office lease will put Square in the heart of Uptown, one of Oakland’s hippest neighborhoods home to numerous bars, restaurants and entertainment venues.

Uptown Station sits right above the 19th Street BART station . . . .

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...445&j=85689581

Very convenient for any employees that need to work in both offices since the SF headquarters is also near a BART station.

But I'm wondering if this isn't in preparation for this:

Square Revives Request to Start a Bank
By Peter Rudegeair
Updated Dec. 19, 2018 12:37 p.m. ET

Square Inc. is making another run at the banking business.

The San Francisco-based financial-technology company said it plans to refile paperwork with state and federal regulators to open a wholly owned bank in Utah as early as Wednesday.

Square Financial Services Inc., as the new unit will be called, would primarily offer loans, deposit accounts and prepaid cards to small businesses . . . .

Acquiring a banking license would allow Square to plug into the pipes of the financial system without having to go through banks and other intermediaries. It would also send a signal that regulators are open to giving Silicon Valley firms access to privileges previously unavailable to them, such as deposit insurance.

(The new subsidiary) will be led by Lewis Goodwin, a former executive at prepaid debit-card company Green Dot Corp. , will be capitalized with $56 million in cash from Square and won’t open any physical branches . . . .

https://www.wsj.com/articles/square-...s&page=1&pos=5