Square

Designing prepaid commitments

Square Appointments sellers could book customers, but they had no reliable way to bring them back. Packages—prepaid bundles redeemed over time—were the answer.

The core decision was sequencing: build memberships first, which was faster, or build packages first, which required net-new infrastructure but created the foundation everything else could build on. I recommended packages. It was the harder path, but the right one.

That meant building a credit primitive from scratch — something that didn't exist anywhere in Square. Credits defined the owner, status, source, and application of a prepaid commitment. Packages were built on top. So was everything that followed.

Seller adoption grew 4x at GA. Packages landed across fitness, beauty, retail, and professional services, which was well beyond the vertical we designed for.