Squarespace
“Can a website-builder-turned-commerce-platform become the financial operating system for independent small businesses by layering payments, lending, and banking onto its existing customer relationships?”
Founded in 2003 as a bootstrapped website builder, Squarespace expanded into e-commerce in 2013 and built a multi-product SaaS platform serving millions of small businesses globally. After its 2021 direct listing and subsequent 2024 take-private by Permira, the company has been systematically layering embedded finance products — Payments, Capital, and Balance — on top of its existing commerce infrastructure, mirroring Shopify's playbook almost exactly but following several years behind. Stripe underpins the entire financial stack (payments, treasury, issuing, and capital), while lending partners Celtic Bank (US) and YouLend (UK) provide the regulated credit product.