In 2009, a St. Louis glassblowing artist and recovering computer scientist named Jim McKelvey lost a sale because he couldn't accept American Express cards. Frustrated by the high costs and difficulty of accepting credit card payments, McKelvey joined his friend Jack Dorsey (the cofounder of Twitter) to launch Square, a startup that would enable small merchants to accept credit card payments on their mobile phones. After finding out that major credit card companies were profiting off small businesses at a rate of forty-five times higher than big billion-dollar corporations, McKelvey realized that his problem was a big issue for a lot of people, and a good reason to start a company.