• BusinessWeek, Tuesday, April 3, 2012 11:31 AM

In other mobile payment news, Square Inc. just swooped in and stole one of Google’s key engineers in the field. Ricardo Reyes, who actually co-founded Google Wallet, will be joining Square as vice president of communications and brand marketing. For Square, which makes credit-card readers for smartphones and tablets, the Reyes win is part of a bold effort to double its staff to 500 this year, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Last month, Square hired PayPal veteran Alyssa Cutright to manage international business, while the company added former Apple executive Jesse Dorogusker to run its hardware division late last year. Along with Google, “Square aims to ward off competition from larger companies, including eBay’s PayPal division and Intuit Inc., which are pushing deeper into the mobile-payment market,” Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

“Ricardo has tremendous experience launching beautiful, design-driven products for world-class brands like Tesla and YouTube,” Aaron Zamost, a Square spokesman, said in an email. Square’s technology lets businesses handle payments via Apple’s iPhone and iPad, as well as devices running on Google’s Android software.

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