Mike Ward · Technical Product Leader · Developer platforms · Payments · Commerce

Products. Teams. Big Ideas.

The record ↓
Track record

Fourteen years building, learning, and leading.

I spent the last ten years building Square's infrastructure, developer platform, and partner ecosystem. What started deep in payments, shipping financial products powering both Square and its public developers — led to leadership roles spanning Block's business units and geos. I helped rebuild Square's core financial services into modern public APIs, set direction for today's public developer offerings, and led organizations from concept to launch as Head of Product, Developers & Partners. In my early days at Square, the Developer platform was a bold bet.1 Ten years later, it processed $18B+ a year in payments (GPV), and its Developers & Partners drove over half of Square's sales leads.2 The platform and ecosystem came to be known as Square's superpower.3

Square's developer platform and partner ecosystem journey
135Kseller integrationsQ1 2016 ~20%of Q3 GPV from integrated SellersQ3 2017 >20%of total GPV, connected SellersQ2 2019 ~halfof mid-market GPV via the platformFY 2020 900K+Sellers on partner integrationsMay 2022 ~50%of mid-market GPV — SEC-filedQ3 2022 “Superpower”Dorsey on the platformQ3 2023 1,000+managed Partners on the platformFY 2025 10-K 71%enterprise Sellers on a partner solutionFeb 2026
$18B+Annual GPV through Square's developer APIs
~200Developers & Partners org — its own P&L, every Square geo
L3–L7Skip-level people management across disciplines
$1.8BCoyote's acquisition by UPS4 — led its 45-person product & eng org
2022 – 2026

Square — Head of Product, Developers & Partners

After years building the platform and the products it powers, I was chosen to lead product for Square's Developers & Partners business.5 The business: a ~200-person organization with a distinct P&L, operating in all Square geos.6 I set the product bets for this P&L — which to fund, which to decline, and which partner and developer surfaces to prioritize in Square's GTM. The public portfolio included Square's developer and partner products:7 Seller commerce APIs across payments, banking, orders, subscriptions,8 catalog, customers, and staff; the Terminal API,9 mobile & web payments SDKs10 — including Cash App Pay & Afterpay11, SDKs supporting seven languages;12 documentation and guides, sandbox, webhooks & eventing, AuthN/Z, GraphQL, developer monetization,13 the App Marketplace;14 developer support, and platform AI products including the Square MCP server.15 Our contributions crossed business units — including hardware and software enabling Square Sellers to accept Bitcoin16, and support for Cash App's first Developer APIs.17

Mike Ward presenting the keynote at Square Unboxed 2023

Foundational service excellence enabled us to ship quickly across the portfolio. Our teams owned and maintained App review & launch operations18, deploy and release processes, versioning, API governance, style guides, and internal libraries — while maintaining public SLAs / SLOs.

I hired, coached, and promoted product and operations leaders who ran these portfolios — measuring success by growth across our customers, people, and products. I was lucky to build teams with brilliant people who loved delivering a better tomorrow for our Sellers & Developers.

2019 – 2022

Square — Product Lead, Developer Platform

In 2019 I was asked to expand focus in the Developers organization, leading products across Square's public API portfolio and supporting AuthN/Z systems. We started with a hard look at our offerings to refine focus on Square Sellers' greatest needs.

Sellers want seamless experiences between their POS and essential services. By enabling Developers to deliver apps and embedded integrations directly to Square Sellers — retailers could connect to their preferred shipping services, restaurants to on-demand delivery services,19 and more. This engagement model scaled across Square's Seller verticals.20

Larger Sellers often need solutions unique to their business.21 By delivering Developer tools from Square's broader commerce offerings (Square Online,22 appointments, inventory, customers, staff, loyalty, catalog23) — Sellers who needed custom integrations could build their own or hire an agency24. POWDR, for example, ran commerce across its ski resorts on nearly all of the platform's APIs.25 This was a direction many of us set, still guiding the platform strategy.26

In this era we also scaled how Square built, shipped, and maintained APIs. By decentralizing ownership, product teams across Square designed, shipped, and improved their own public APIs — resulting in a public offering spanning all business domains and more than 30 APIs.27 The Developers team provided standards, style guides, review processes, shepherding, and governance to scale this model across all Square business units. Along the way, we shipped GraphQL28 while driving AuthN/Z initiatives.29

2016 – 2019

Square — Senior Product Manager, Payments Platform

Square hired me to grow the upmarket payments business. I founded the Payments Intelligence team, responsible for transaction-cost and pricing capabilities behind Square's move upmarket and across verticals. We led the first change Square ever made to its flagship 2.75% rate,30 and predicted each transaction's cost with our patented machine learning services.31

Payments Intelligence's charter ran deeper than data and pricing: we owned the economics of every Square payment. Interchange, network, and processing fees were Square's largest cost of revenue, accruing billions of dollars a year.32 My team attacked the bottom line by optimizing each transaction: through smart debit routing, decline reductions, and other optimizations. Investors saw results quarter after quarter — "improvements in our transaction cost profile" drove transaction profit through 2017 and 201833. This charter endured, with Block crediting "more favorable interchange economics" for beating cost growth in 2023 and 2024.34

In 2017, I led product for Square's next big bet: payments & financial Developer products powering online marketplaces, with Eventbrite signed as our hero customer35. Delivering services powering complex online marketplaces was some of the deepest technical work of my career: with colleagues across the company, we rewrote Square's core financial services so these same systems could serve Square's own engineers and outside Developers alike.36 This meant shipping financial capabilities marketplaces and others demanded, like multiparty settlement,37 while laying the foundation of Square's modern (V2) API surface which launched publicly over the following years: Payments (2019), Bank Accounts and Disputes (2020), and Cards among them38.

2012 – 2016

Coyote Logistics — Enterprise Operations → Software Development Manager

Coyote — Chicago's technology-first freight brokerage — hired me as a freight broker in 2012. I taught myself to code after hours and designed a multi-shipment route-optimization program serving carriers when direct routes weren't available — work recognized through a 2012 Chicago Innovation Award.39 After proving the model with our production fleet, Jeff Silver (CEO) moved me into a product role improving Coyote's technology offerings. Our teams shipped Coyote's new customer-dedicated web Transportation Management System (TMS), automated carrier payments and improved route visibility through Coyote's carrier facing mobile App, and delivered machine learning shipment recommendations to optimize carrier routes. Part of this work is preserved in a patent application I co-invented — automated advance payments and dynamic load routing.40

Mike Ward with about thirty members of Coyote's Pune, India development team, covered in Holi colors on a rooftop
Pune, India — with colleagues celebrating Holi.

By the end of 2014 I moved into the role as Coyote's Software Development Manager, leading a 45-person product & engineering organization — while founding Coyote's first international development teams between Chicago, IL and Pune, India. Our international teams grew to carry the majority of Coyote's codebase.

During my tenure with Coyote — products our teams built — CoyoteGO, the carrier app we launched in 2013,41 the web freight transportation management system, payments, and tracking systems — supported a $2.1B-revenue business through its $1.8B acquisition by UPS,42 then the largest acquisition in UPS's 108-year history.43

2014 – 2025

US Patents Inventor

Application 2014 · Coyote · automated freight payments US 2015/0213402 A1 Granted 2019 · Square · predicting payment costs US 10,402,807 B1 Granted 2022 · Square · tokenizing payment accounts US 11,514,437 B1 Granted 2023 · Square · tokens inside tokens US 11,636,468 B1 Granted Aug 2025 · Block · encapsulating payment accounts US 12,400,220 B2
Ventures & advisory

Growing big ideas.

2024 – present

HeritageXplore

Strategic advisor to HeritageXplore, the premier discovery, booking, and membership ecosystem for Britain's independently owned castles and stately homes. Founded by Violet Manners, backed by Nick Hanauer and Anya Hindmarch — HeritageXplore helps travelers connect with exclusive events and historic stays. HeritageXplore's success and stories have been covered by Forbes, Tatler, and Town & Country.44 I advise on zero-to-one product, payments, GTM, and engineering.

2020 – 2021

Eskalate & A2SV

A2SV — Africa to Silicon Valley mission film

Co-founded Eskalate (2020), the product arm of A2SV — a Google-backed45 nonprofit training Africa's top engineers. Served as A2SV's Head of Product, guiding students on problem identification, research, and product delivery.

Students trained by shipping products benefiting local communities — including TrackSym, a COVID-19 symptom-tracking app built with Ethiopia's Ministry of Health.46 We are proud of the first ~40 engineers we placed with interviews — landing roles at Google, Palantir, Amazon, and Bloomberg. A2SV has grown into 1,200+ engineers trained across 22 countries and 120+ offers from top tech companies.47

How I lead

If you want to go far, go together.

My proudest career moments weren't doing, but observing. Coaching somebody through a brutal but needed product others couldn't wrangle — then watching this person break down walls for their customers, share the launch with Jack Dorsey,48 strike sparks in front of their customers,49 and grow the business. Then do it all over again with the next big thing. The more this happened, the less my coaching was needed. And the more our people grew into leaders.

“If you don't have at least one report who is essentially your peer, you haven't done a good job hiring.”

Gokul Rajaram Former Square leader

I was lucky to hire and work alongside several reports who have since grown into leadership roles at Block and other companies. At Square, I directly managed and promoted people across product and operations roles — including skip-level scope from L3 to L7. Our teams grew through customer obsession, high standards, execution excellence, distributed ownership, candor with kindness, and celebrating wins.

Before Square, I founded Coyote Logistics' first domestic and international teams between Chicago, IL and Pune, India — directly managing and hiring for a 45-person product and engineering org. Building and leading distributed teams across time zones and cultures in 2014 served as a toolkit I used to build teams and cultures beyond Coyote.

The Square Developers & Partners team — over a hundred people gathered in the atrium of Square's headquarters
Square — the Developers & Partners team.
Four members of Square's developer platform leadership standing together in front of a projection screen in a conference room
Square Unboxed — sharing more on self-serve and Add-ons.
Still shipping

Here are some examples.

I like solving problems with tools people are excited to use. Remaining a builder (software, hardware, metalworking, woodworking) keeps me busy outside my professional work. Here are some problems I've taken on — along with their software and hardware solutions. You can test some of these yourself and follow my latest work on GitHub.

Mike Ward's GitHub contribution graph

3,021 contributions in the last year

View GitHub →
Forecasting · Harmonic analysis · iOS & Android

Shaka. The ocean, calibrated.

You already know the spot — it's been on your GPS for years. What you don't know is what the spot will look like when you show up. So the night before, you cobble a best-guess from different sources: a swell app, a tide site, a wind model, a buoy reading miles away, a fishing forum, a gut-feel. You wake up before dawn hopeful you got it right, but find yourself looking at dirty water after a two-hour drive.

Shaka lets you drop a pin anywhere in the ocean — and briefs your dive before you leave home: water clarity from satellite images,50 swell, current, wind, tide, and more. Shaka considers the fine details on each spot so you're not guessing if the open ocean swell is reduced by the cove you're diving. Around the globe — Shaka shares regulations and licensing requirements for each spot.51 Shaka shares spots curated by pros — while keeping your spots private.

Briefing an arbitrary lat/long with a 5 day forecast is Shaka's secret. Global forecasts predict open water behavior, but the best dives can be sheltered by reef or land. Shaka casts directions around spots to understand sheltered water behavior,52 while sharing pinpoint accuracy on the variables that change over small distances — like tide.53 Each variable is often a paid service;54 Shaka pieces them together free, so you can dive with confidence. Shaka is live in beta — with pro divers and captains testing globally.

Request beta access → View the build on GitHub →
Developer platform · Stablecoin yield · Web & REST

Yield-API. DeFi yield at scale.

Your cash pays interest. Whether you sweep cash into a money market, high yield account or another investment vehicle — your money earns something while it waits. But not stablecoins: backed by real dollars, parked in some app, earning exactly nothing, month after month. The yield exists — onchain lending can pay 3–8%,55 but the app holding your stablecoins just can't reach it. Wiring into DeFi protocols takes a blockchain team most fintechs don't have, and 2025's stablecoin laws in the US and EU bar issuers from paying interest directly.56 So the balance just sits.

This is the API for Neobanks and Fintechs in the middle: fine-grained onchain investment controls behind a single API engineers can quickly integrate and understand. No blockchain expertise required. It ships with a developer platform: mint a sandbox key in under a minute,57 docs with live playgrounds and SDKs,58 signed webhooks with retries,59 access management for any complex business, and investment levers controlling yield for each customer. Sandbox makes sure real funds can't move, letting developers build and test without worrying.

Yield-API was built as an open sourced proof of concept to demonstrate the future of stablecoin investing.

Try it live → View the build on GitHub →
Yield-API developer dashboard on iPhone — Your Applications with Lumen Savings, Beacon Treasury, and Atlas Payroll active
Health monitoring · Hardware · iOS, Android & web

ApneaWatch. $35 sleep lab.

Obstructive sleep apnea affects 1 – 5% of children, with the diagnosis often missed.60 A sleep study means a night in a hospital bed sometimes exceeding $10,000.61 For a toddler, this means electrodes taped to their scalp, new people, and sleeping in a strange room full of beeping machines. Many families listen to snoring loved ones not knowing if oxygen intake is impacted.

ApneaWatch lets anybody purchase a $35 pulse oximeter62 — and turn this device into an overnight monitor. Just clip the reader onto a finger and ApneaWatch starts recording. When the morning comes, ~1M datapoints are ingested, evaluated to age-appropriate calibrations cited to published clinical literature,63 and summarized. ApneaWatch tracks sleep trends including oxygen desaturation events — and distills weeks of sleep into a one-pager a clinician can quickly review.64

ApneaWatch was built to survive signal interruptions, device restarts, and full nights unattended. ApneaWatch's smartphone App decodes the oximeter's Bluetooth stream and pushes it over a WebSocket. This means any device with an internet connection can show realtime vitals — even a grandparent's phone across the globe. You can run two oximeters at once to track readings across the body.65

Request access →
Messaging · Zero-knowledge by design · Android

Monk. Focus app gone private.

Your phone is down for two hours of focus. But, your friend just messaged from one of 15 messaging apps. You're now choosing between your best work and the people you love. Two hours without replying could be seen as the silent treatment. What if you could stay focused, reply across your messaging apps, and keep each message private?

Monk does exactly this, and nothing else. Tap the orb and 15 messaging apps go quiet; anyone reaching out gets a reply you craft. Monk puts your privacy first — built on a system guaranteeing conversations never leave your phone. Apps replying to your messages usually read them — the category's leading auto-reply app states it may collect your location and app activity.66 Monk ships without the internet permission 83% of Android apps request.67 Your conversations never reach Monk servers.68

And when your session ends, Monk forgets. Messages are answered in the moment, never stored — the entire app is 1.4 MB of open-source code,69 smaller than a single photo, with nothing hiding inside. So you get your two hours of deep work, your best friend gets an instant answer, and nobody gets the silent treatment.

View the build on GitHub →
Monk — an active focus session on a Pixel 8: the ink-black END orb, a live countdown, and counters showing messages silenced and replies sent
What's next

Let’s talk!

After a decade heads-down at Square, I was able to take my first real break — you’ll find me exploring with family, while still shipping most days. I’m considering my next product-leadership role while advising a number of early-stage companies. If you’re building something new or want to talk through a big idea, send me an email or a message on LinkedIn — I read everything.