VeriFone CEO Disses Square

31-year-old company VeriFone, which is facing competition in some of its industries for the first time thanks to the rise of alternative payment platforms, is starting to get a little testy. Instead of looking at Square as a viable threat to its decades of credit card processing monopolies, VeriFone instead thinks the company is going to implode, despite all the positive media attention it has received.

The CEO of VeriFone Doug Bergeron was recently asked about Square's new round of $200 million venture capital funding, an event that places the company's valuation at $3.25 billion. Bergeron simply said, "Pets.com." That's obviously a reference to the bungled pet supply website which became the poster child of the dot-con boom of the later 1990s. It went through a $300 million round of VC funding and made Super Bowl ads before it just completely collapsed.

So clearly that's what Bergeron sees as the fate of Square. He is brushing it off as just another fad that's growing too big and too fast for its own good. This isn't exactly the first time VeriFone has showed a lack of respect to its new competitor. Last year, Bergeron publicly blasted Square as facilitating fraud and credit card skimming. In other words, there isn't a very cozy relationship between the two companies.

[via American Banker]