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Square Challenges PayPal In Web Checkout

Square ( SQ ) is intensifying its offense against PayPal ( PYPL )’s Web checkout products. With details in a blog post early Wednesday , Square says that it has created a new tool that can process payments from any website after the seller adds several of lines of code. Called E-commerce API (application programming interface), it marks the first time that Square has offered sellers the ability to put a Square checkout page on any website. Square’s announcement mounts pressure on PayPal, which already is facing stiff competition from tech titans such as Apple ( AAPL ) Pay and Google’s Android Pay, among other offerings. Google is a unit of Alphabet ( GOOGL ). Prior to Wednesday, Square offered its merchants two Web checkout options using its own prebuilt store and two third-party options for using websites prebuilt by BigCommerce and Weebly. But the San Francisco-based company did not have solutions for merchants who opted to build their own websites. Square has more than 2 million merchants and is adding about 100,000 every quarter. PayPal has more than 13 million sellers. Both companies charge 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction in the U.S. for website sales. Square — which is run by CEO Jack Dorsey, who is also top boss at Twitter ( TWTR ) — also is announcing Register API, a method to integrate Square’s payments processing into any iOS point of sale. Square says that it’s adding Register API in recognition of the fact that some sellers have specialized needs for point-of-sale applications. Square stock closed up 2.5% at 13.74 on Tuesday. The company has an IBD Composite Rating of 51, where 99 is the highest. Wedbush analyst Gil Luria said that the stock’s recent volatility is largely because the company has a small float — relatively few shares are traded publicly. The float will change once the lockup period expires in May. Luria also has previously told IBD that Square is popular among short sellers.

Amazon Home Services Logs Massive Expansion

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and its Home Services business has expanded to more than 90% of the U.S., according to Amazon spokeswoman Erika Takeuchi. Home Services helps shoppers find and hire local businesses to do things like housecleaning, or assembling furniture — much like the Yellow Pages, but backed with Amazon’s customer service and guarantees. The service also has an on-demand component. In a press release, Amazon said that the on-demand market for home services is estimated to be worth between $400 billion and $800 billion. The company has added 500 services, bringing the total to 1,200. The largest markets are Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C., Takeuchi said. “It’s because of the density of the metro area,” she said. The company is in 30 metro markets, up from four a year ago. Takeuchi says the most popular services are television wall-mounting, treadmill assembly, and housecleaning; and that services offered via the site are subject to seasonal trends. For example, she says, cleaning and home-improvement-related services are most popular in spring and housecleaning before the holidays. When asked about competitor Angie’s List ( ANGI ), and the company’s recent announcement about tearing down its paywall — it previously was a subscription service — Takeuchi said that Amazon does not comment on competitors.        

Microsoft Stock Rises Ahead Of Build Developers Conference

Microsoft ( MSFT ) shares climbed Tuesday on bullish notes from two investment banks and expectations for a news-filled Build developers conference, which starts Wednesday in San Francisco. Microsoft stock rose 2.2% to 54.71 on the stock market today . It has climbed 13.5% since hitting a five-month low of 48.19 on Feb. 8. The stock hit an all-time high of 56.85 on Dec. 29. UBS analyst Brent Thill reiterated his buy rating on Microsoft stock, with a 12-month price target of 60. Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brendan Barnicle maintained his overweight rating with a price target of 65. Thill said Microsoft’s commercial cloud business was on pace to lap the company’s targets. “Microsoft continues to execute on a balanced story, with the commercial cloud businesses (including Azure, Office 365, Dynamics) leading the charge,” he said in a research note Monday. Microsoft’s commercial cloud business ended the December quarter with an annual revenue run rate of over $9.4 billion. That’s up more than 70% year over year, with more than 350 of the Fortune 500 companies now using two or more Microsoft cloud offerings, Thill said. Microsoft Cloud Sales A Year Ahead Of Goal The business is well ahead of schedule in its efforts to reach management’s stated goal of a $20 billion run rate in the fiscal year ending June 2018, he said. Microsoft’s goal assumes a 35% compound annual growth rate. “We note that this growth has been entirely organic (with no major acquisitions boosting numbers), and that at the current pace (about 70% year-over-year growth), the company would reach this target about one year ahead of schedule,” Thill said. Cloud computing revenue has the benefit of being highly recurring and should be higher-margin over time, he said. Microsoft is going to promote its Internet cloud computing accomplishments at the three-day Build conference, as well as at the Envision IT Conference in New Orleans April 4-6. At Build, Microsoft also is expected to discuss its Windows platform and its HoloLens holographic computing system . “We expect positive updates on the Universal Windows Platform, mobile and Azure,” Barnicle said in a report Monday. “Overall, we expect fewer new-product announcements than last year, but more insight into the direction Microsoft is taking with its products.” At Google’s cloud developers conference last week, there were few indications that Microsoft was losing cloud market share to the Alphabet ( GOOGL ) company. “We spoke with systems integrators and customers at Google Cloud Platform’s Next event last week in San Francisco,” Barnicle said. “We heard that demand for Google’s cloud has increased since Diane Greene took the helm in November, but we did not hear that it is coming at Azure’s expense. “We repeatedly heard that Microsoft’s momentum remains robust among enterprises moving Microsoft workloads to the cloud.” RELATED: Microsoft Stock Gets Thumbs Up From Oppenheimer .