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Jacqueline Reses

Executive

PPP
Type
Person
Role
Executive
Programs
PPP
Updated

The profile

Head of Square Capital from October 2015 to October 2020; Square reported facilitating more than $820 million in PPP loans to more than 76,000 small businesses by June 10, 2020, through partner Celtic Bank. Chair and CEO of Lead Bank since 2022.

Identity and role

Jacqueline "Jackie" Reses led Square Capital — the small-business lending arm of Jack Dorsey's Square, Inc. (now Block) — from October 2015 to October 2020, and was Square's Chief Human Resources Officer. She is now Chair and CEO of Lead Bank in Kansas City (Affirm board profile); the Post House Capital family-office role is cited to no source we have a copy of. Square ran its first PPP loans through partner Celtic Bank before its own industrial-loan charter came online.

Biography / career arc

Reses earned a degree from the Wharton School; she worked at Goldman Sachs and the private-equity firm Apax Partners, joined Yahoo as EVP of people and development, and sat on Alibaba's board (Square's October 2015 hiring release; Affirm board profile). The iBuilding, Apax board seats, Yahoo remote-work memo and Alibaba IPO details are cited to Wikipedia; we do not have a copy. She joined Square in October 2015 to build Square Capital (Square release). Square obtained an industrial-loan charter in 2020 (American Banker), and she announced her departure from Square effective October 30, 2020 (American Banker).

The company and its PPP role

Square Capital had been an automated working-capital lender to Square's own merchants. When PPP arrived, fintechs were approved roughly a week after banks: the SBA opened the program April 3, 2020 and exhausted the first $349 billion before fintechs could get going at scale. Square began processing PPP applications on April 29, 2020, and built a new lending platform to do it rather than reuse its existing one, because the program required different data collection, underwriting, and verification. Reses described engineers "working on this nonstop every day," including weekends. Square ran the loans through Celtic Bank, an existing SBA lender in Salt Lake City, while it waited for direct SBA access, and kept using Celtic even after it was approved directly, sending Celtic XML files the bank uploaded to the SBA.

The book was almost entirely the smallest borrowers. On April 17, 2020, American Banker reported that Square Capital's average loan was $7,000, compared with roughly $240,000 for PPP loans approved during the just-exhausted initial $349 billion funding round. Square's own June review later reported that, as of June 10, it had facilitated more than $820 million in PPP loans to more than 76,000 small businesses. The average was below $11,000, 97% of the loans were under $50,000, and about 60% of borrowers were new to Square Capital. The full-year figure landed higher: Square's FY2020 Form 10-K, filed February 23, 2021, reports that "[f]or the year ended December 31, 2020, we facilitated the issuance of $857 million of PPP loans, excluding cancelled loans, through an external bank partner, of which we sold $399.0 million to an investor," to "over 80,000 small businesses." The 10-K's "through an external bank partner" phrasing is the audited confirmation of the role: Square Capital facilitated the loans and a partner bank was the lender of record (the filing does not name the partner; press and Square's own disclosures identify it as Celtic Bank). On the SBA loan-level figures, Square Capital appears as the originating lender on about 72,564 loans worth roughly $0.68 billion (the difference from the company's tallies is the counting window and the partner-bank attribution).

In April 2020, as fintechs waited for Congress to refill the program, she told American Banker: "I hope they make sure that they leave room for the little guys: the sole proprietor, the plumber, the electrician, the hairstylist, the massage therapist, people who are the lifeblood of the American economy." She described Square's borrowers as "the most needy, the smallest, and a population that has otherwise been overlooked or excluded from the financial system."

At the program's outset Reses urged Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to open PPP to fintech lenders like Square, according to Forbes ; no primary record of the communication has been located.

Their own relief

No PPP or EIDL loan to Reses personally, or to Square/Block as a borrower, is established in the public record. Square's role in PPP was as a lender/facilitator for its merchants' loans, not as a relief borrower.

No charges or enforcement actions against Reses were identified, and Square/Block's PPP lending did not produce a fraud finding against the company in the public record.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

After leaving Square, Reses acquired Kansas City's Lead Bank in 2022 and became its chair and CEO (Affirm board profile); the $778.9 million asset figure and the investor list are cited to Forbes; we do not have a copy. She has chaired the San Francisco Fed's Economic Advisory Council and has served on the boards of Affirm, Nubank and Endeavor (Affirm board profile); the Self-Made Boss book, Kansas City Fed council and Pershing Square Tontine board lines are not in any copy we have.

Sources held in this archive

Original source documents and archived captures

Sources

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