US-based mobile payments specialist Square has acquired New York design firm 80/20, which specialises in interface design. Terms were undisclosed.
The latest acquisition comes after the San Francisco-based company closed a deal last month which brings the total investment in the company to $341m since it was founded in 2009. Square closed its series D round, raising $200m from investors including coffee shop Starbucks, private equity investor Suhail Rizvi, and Citi Ventures. The company is also backed by corporates including Visa.
CEO and founder of Square, Jack Dorsey, who was a co-founder of social media company Twitter, tweeted on Monday morning: “Square acquires 80/20, one of the best design agencies in the world, and with it, an office in SoHo. We believe in NYC.”
With the latest deal, Square has secured expertise from designers with experience at Apple and Adobe. 80/20’s past clients include Warner Brothers, Comcast and Fidelity. Past work also includes the creation of a dashboard for the electric vehicle company Better Place and a fitness-tracking watch for Motorola.
The team of twelve designers will work solely for Square creating user interfaces.
Roughly 50,000 of Square’s customers which are mostly small businesses like coffee shops, are in New York.
In a statement on Monday, 80/20 described its design philosophy as “the belief that the best design gets out of the user’s way and that you can craft unforgettable user experiences by keeping things simple and obsessing over the details.”