Willem Avé, the global product head of Square, stated that there is still a lot of software waiting to be written and expressed excitement about this space. His statement did not include specific products or timelines, with the core judgment being that software supply is far from saturated.

Avé is currently the global product head at Square, responsible for the strategy and implementation of the company’s software system. He joined Square in 2014 after the acquisition of the appointment scheduling startup BookFresh, where he served as CTO; he has held various positions within Square, including engineering, general manager of business units, and head of POS and platform products, and will oversee Square products starting in 2025.

Square is part of Block and serves over 4 million merchants, with public materials stating that it processed over $250 billion in payments last year. In recent years, Block has eliminated the general manager system and shifted to a functional structure focused on product, design, and engineering, while promoting internal automation. Avé has repeatedly emphasized that organizations should operate around merchant outcomes; the further away from the customer, the worse the delivery quality.

His recent public roadmap includes a management AI agent for small merchants called Managerbot, as well as using AI for inventory, marketing, and internal processes, rather than just for conversational demonstrations. In 2025, Square will also make its product roadmap public, reasoning that transparency can build merchant trust. Block stated that in the first half of 2026, Square will deliver about 130 features, approximately three times that of the same period last year, and that the average code changes per engineer have increased by about 150%.

The Square product line has expanded from early card readers to include cash registers, banking, credit, Bitcoin payments, and merchant networks. Avé's judgment aligns with the company's narrative: there is still a lack of software that small merchants can directly use, and AI is being used to fill the gap that only large enterprises could afford in operational systems.

In terms of market mechanisms, this is not a transaction event driven by buying and selling, but rather a statement from the product head about the remaining demand for software. Funds continue to flow from merchant payment processing fees, SaaS subscriptions, and financial services into Block's software and AI toolchain. The beneficiaries are the Square software layer that continues to expand its features; the pressured parties are competitors whose functionality is stagnant and rely solely on hardware or rates for payment collection. The event is weakly driven, more of a resonance between capacity and narrative.

Source: Public Information