Mobile payment company Square has leased a large downtown office with room for more than 200 employees.

“We’re expanding our footprint in Portland, and we’re excited to find new talent who want to build tools that help people participate and thrive in the economy,” the San Francisco company said in a written statement, acknowledging it has leased a 64,000-square-foot office at the corner of Southwest Sixth Avenue and Southwest Washington Street. The Portland Business Journal first reported the news.

Square’s website lists a range of Portland job openings, including software engineers, customer service representatives and back-office legal jobs.

Square’s mobile payment devices are ubiquitous at Portland food carts and other small retailers, enabling merchants to use their smartphones and tablets to process credit card payments. Founded by CEO Jack Dorsey, who also founded and runs Twitter, Square had 3,349 employees at the end of 2018 – the most recent period for which the company reported annual results.

Square will be the latest in a long string of prominent companies to set up outposts in the Portland area, escaping from the competitive real estate and hiring markets in the Bay Area and Seattle. Others include Intel, eBay, Google, Salesforce, Amazon and Apple.

The Business Journal reported Monday that Apple will lease an unspecified amount of space in a new office building on Southeast Stark, about 10 blocks west of the company’s current engineering office in Southeast Portland. Apple also has offices in Vancouver and in Washington County.

-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699

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