FOR the last six months, 31-year-old Tobagonian Sekani Solomon, was working on the secret rebranding of Square—the publicly listed American financial services and digital payments company, which was co-founded by Jack Dorsey, its former chief executive, who also co-founded Twitter,.
On December 10, the re-branding went live.
Square—which comprises Square, Cash App, TIDAL, TBD54566975 and Spiral (formerly Square Crypto) —is now known as Block Inc.
“Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same,” Dorsey said at the time.
Solomon, the motion design lead for Cash App, explained that the re-brand was kept quiet except for a few members of management.
Dorsey’s resignation from Twitter a few weeks before Block was launched, he said, came as a surprise to them.
“That news (Dorsey’s resignation) happened on Monday, and we had long decided on a December launch a couple of months ago. Jack is, you know, he’s a really intelligent guy, really forward thinking. His leadership and the vision that he brings is super thoughtful and inspiring. And for him to be running two massive companies is just like, wow, really crazy but we are also just glad to have him to ourselves because the company is also growing pretty rapidly. For Cash App, it’s just continuing to grow and trying to figure out how to get some of these services internationally,” Solomon said in an interview with the Sunday Express last week from Tobago.
It’s his first trip back to the country—he is the last of five children of former Tobago House of Assembly (THA) official Gladstone Solomon—following the border closure in March 2020.
Since the pandemic was declared, the technological axis of the world shifted to digital—from working to teaching to banking.
For Cash App, there was an uptick as it was able to supply tools to people that don’t have them, “especially for people of colour and minorities”.
Cash App, he explained, creates a digital account where you can send and receive money without having to touch actual cash.
Solomon explained that Cash App was used to process stimulus payments from the US Government as a large percentage of Americans were unbanked.
“Even in the US, it’s still difficult for people to create bank accounts or to receive money. If you didn’t have a bank account, it would be difficult to get the stimulus. So when you create a platform that enables people to easily take payments and then send it around to people, that becomes appealing,” he said.
But Cash App isn’t just an app, it is a digital payment ecosystem.
“We’re a platform that enables someone to get a payment, then be able to buy stock from most companies on the Stock Exchange and buy Bitcoin. You could sign up for Cash App, get a bank account number and routing number, so you could get your pay cheque directly deposited into Cash App as well,” he added.
Cash App has 14 million users in the United States and the UK.
From film to tech
Solomon says the first time he physically touched cash in years was when he came home on holiday, earlier this month. Since December 2019, T&T has gone from cotton bills to polymer.
Solomon explained that motion design was a specific career choice as he had thought of being a software engineer when he started to apply to university.
He got his first job in NYC before he even graduated from Atlanta-based Savannah College of Art and Design.
Solomon began his career in television (two projects netted two Emmys), advertisements and commercial films. He worked on the Oscar-winning film Black Panther and in 2018, he made the jump to technology.
After working a few months with software and hardware giant, Apple, he took a full time position at Cash App.
For him, the attraction of Cash App was the limits it pushed from a brand and visual perspective.
“The way they were approaching it was from a very forward, millennial and Gen Z perspective,” he said with the goal being to attract the unbanked and create a relatable brand.
“It gave me the ability to have more creative freedom in the projects. It also gave me the opportunity to help create a new entity,” he explained.
He cited companies such as Red Bull, Virgin and Coca Cola who were able to diversify their business in so many different sectors using their brand.
“We were taking cues from those types of companies, but pushing that forward and applying it to fintech, which hasn’t really been done before,” he said.
Now that the re-branding is complete, he is diving head-first into Cash App.
“When you study motion design, essentially you are studying storytelling. The idea is to get people behind what you’re doing from a narrative and creative standpoint. And that’s the main idea of, I guess, graphic design or motion design from that perspective or brand. It’s communication, right? It’s visual problem solving. By definition of the craft, that’s what I’m doing in my day job. I’m looking at this product, or a specific feature and I’m figuring out what’s the most appealing way we could send this out to consumers that’s still informative, but still feels cutting edge and creative,” he said
He said he married this creative aspect with the nuts and bolts of being in a tech-based business which yields a lot of learnings.
“Here at Cash App, I can do an animation or I could come up with a concept and execute it. And then they put it out and I see all the metrics, I see the impressions it gets. So you have that extra, I guess pressure, to be a little bit more calculated on the things you do because you see the results and it affects the business. So I think that it was more like a learning perspective, but also, factoring research into it. What do people gravitate towards, what’s working, not working? It’s like an iterative process of learning.
“From a technical perspective, creating the visuals that we do, requires a lot of technical knowledge. And then there’s like the creative aspect to make it look or just narratively, have it make sense and make it feel intelligent and smart. And then this is the strategic part of it, where do you roll it out, where do you place it? Would it appeal to me? I’m not saying that I do all this in a bubble. Obviously, I work with a team of people who are equally skilled and talented. But you know, you had to learn how to work cross functionally with a bunch of different players who may not understand exactly how to create an amazing 3D motion graphic and the time it takes to do that, especially because I lead a team now,” he said.
“Also, we’re playing in a field that’s relatively new. Apps like Cash App haven’t really existed,” he says, pointing to apps such as Venmo, Chime, Coinbase and Robin Hood as competitors.
“It’s almost like we’re kind of competing with all of those competitors that do like one thing really well. We have to be able to do all those things equally as well but then create an ecosystem for all those to connect in a thoughtful way. And that’s always the challenge,” he said.
On being futuristic
The name and the vision for Block is futuristic and it follows Facebook’s October rebrand to Meta.
Solomon’s work centres around creating stories for that future.
He describes the global digital landscape right now as “the wild, wild west”.
He observed that globally cryptocurrency is growing because of the attractiveness of decentralisation, digital wallets are expanding and this year, there’s been an explosion of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) which has given artists like himself opportunities to make money on digital art.
“I saw people in the space, like people I knew, just being a regular motion designer, and then he sold maybe over $100 million worth of art this year alone which is pretty insane. At one point he held a record for most sold. Like the space right now is so crazy. And it’s quickly evolving,” he said.
So how is Cash App pushing the future?
“You have pretty much most of the capabilities of the average bank. You have a bank account, bank account number, routing number. You can get direct deposits so you can send money to your friends and also we just enabled the ability to send someone or give someone stock or Bitcoin. So say, we had dinner, we want to split the bill, you could now say—do I want my money in cash or do I want to turn Bitcoin or do I want to turn stock, which, you know, is a feature that you haven’t really seen before in that sense. So again, it’s kind of changing the idea of the exchange of value and currency,” he said.
He observed that with different jurisdictions, the banking laws are different, which makes expanding difficult.
“So that’s why Bitcoin is a huge initiative, because there’s not a lot of regulation there. So it’s easier to create a Bitcoin wallet that we can launch internationally,” he said.
On the major concern by the Central Bank that cryptocurrencies are used to launder money, he countered that people launder billions of fiat currency.
“I think if you only focus on negatives and you miss a few opportunities as well,” he said.
He used his recent purchase of two art pieces with Bitcoin at Fitzroy Hoyte’s Think Art Studio as an example.
“How can I purchase this without having to run to an ATM or do a traditional bank wire which would take forever? We could just use Bitcoin because it is a decentralised platform. Mark (Pereira of Zed Labs who facilitated the transaction) used his wallet and I could use my Cash App because they both use a bitcoin address. Using that I could just send a Bitcoin to his address. I think it showcases the power of the platform,” he said. Zed Labs was featured in last week’s Express Business.
He likens traditional banks to Blockbuster and Cash App and crypto to Netflix. Cash App is developing their ecosystem to serve its customers.
“In terms of creating a well designed, user-friendly, just, I guess, super app that allows someone to download the app and just have a sophisticated suite of tools that are easy to use, which I think will be super valuable to a bunch of different consumers and I think we’re just focused on expanding that across the USA and, of course, the world.
“In terms of the Caribbean, I think there’s a huge opportunity. Like me, the idea of even going to a bank still is kind of crazy. Like I haven’t been to a physical bank in I can’t tell you when, just because I’m able to do everything on the phone. Even to do simple transactions, withdrawal costs and cash takes so long in Trinidad and Tobago. And you know, the only thing you can’t really get more of is time and time is valuable. So when you create a platform that helps people just move money around, send money around, see money, spend money. I think that’s helpful.
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