UPDATE: This article includes additional analysts' comments.
The Trump family has again excited investors on Wall Street as the president-elect's oldest son joined the board of directors of a fledgling payments company.
Donald Trump Jr. joined the board of directors of PSQ Holdings, the parent company of PublicSquare, on Tuesday, according to the company. Willie Langston, a partner with Corient, a Houston-based asset management and advisory firm, also took a seat on the board.
"[Trump Jr.] has been an investor in PublicSquare since before our IPO, and [Langston] invested in our most recent PIPE offering in October 2024," said Michael Seifert, chairman and CEO of PublicSquare, in a statement. "[Trump Jr.'s] passion for creating a 'cancel-proof' economy, his years of strategic business experience, and his leadership within the shooting sports industry offer important expertise at the board level."
PSQ Holding's stock nearly quadrupled following the announcement, rising 270.4%, or $5.57, to $7.63 as of market close in New York. The company has a market capitalization of $250.3 million. Banking stocks
Palm Beach, Florida-based PublicSquare was founded in February 2021 on the promise of connecting Christian businesses with Christian consumers, allowing them to "shop their values," according to the company. The company went public in July 2023 through a reverse IPO with Colombier Acquisition Corp. Today, 67% of voting rights are held by Christian shareholders, the company said.
"Having been involved from the earliest days of the company, I am thrilled to join the PublicSquare board of directors," said Trump Jr. in a statement. "With a rapidly growing marketplace and payments ecosystem, PublicSquare has a distinct position in the market based on the core tenets of our nation's founding, paired with a results-driven management team."
Since its founding, PublicSquare has worked to position itself as a defender of Christian values amid increased discussion of "cancel culture" in American commerce and politics, and has put payments at the center of its strategy. In early March, PublicSquare tapped Klarna's former North America CEO Brian Billingsley as president of its payments subsidiary, PSQ Payments, according to a company release.
The company has also taken the firearms industry under its wing with the March all-equity acquisition of Credova Holdings, a point-of-sale financing platform providing
"There are legal sectors of the economy that still don't entirely trust the payments industry," said Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures, adding selling firearms and ammunition as examples.
PSQ Holdings and Credova's pitch is that it is politically sympathetic to, understands and will serve merchants like online sellers of ammunition and firearms enthusiasts, he said. "Putting a totem of MAGA like Don Trump Jr. on its board may boost PSQ Holdings' appeal and therefore BNPL volume with some merchants and consumers."
"Still, PSQ Holdings is a small cap, money-losing niche business. Having Trump Jr. on the board signals a kind of tribal affiliation and may be helpful. It won't, however, alter the company's fundamentals," Grover said.
The company has been vocal about its Christian ethos in other areas, too. Seifert, the company's founder and CEO, in October joined The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute in a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas over mandates from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services that require employers to provide health care coverage that includes women's reproductive and gender-related care.
"Our Christian values influence almost everything we do at PublicSquare," Seifert said in a statement. "These ethics inform our business, including how we source merchants and communicate with Christian audiences about PublicSquare's services."
To be sure, PublicSquare's values-driven payment platform targeting merchants and customers aligned with Christian beliefs isn't a novel concept, said Richard Crone, chief executive and founder of Crone Consulting. "
Over the past 20 years, credit cards have amplified this approach through niche branding and affiliate marketing, he said.
"PublicSquare applies the same strategy, but focuses on cultural and political alignment," Crone said. "It's less about innovation in payments and more about aligning transactions with a specific brand promise."
But politically focused companies — with the exception of the media — are often difficult to sustain no matter which side of the aisle they take, said Aaron Press, research director of worldwide payment strategies at IDC.
"The audience tends to be more limited than the founders expect, and by nature these businesses exclude a significant share of the total market," Press said. "The cultural or policy trends these companies are reacting to tend to change, rendering them less relevant. I would not expect a payments business to be meaningfully different. And if the merchants they intend to serve are also politically focused, the challenges are compounded."
PublicSquare's meteoric rise today comes in an "increasingly politicized environment," said Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting. "I don't doubt that there's demand for some people to 'shop their values.' You see [canceling efforts] on the left. There's efforts to boycott companies like Chick-Fil-A that are known for supporting conservative causes. This looks like a similar kind of thing on the right. So it's not unprecedented.
"From a payments industry standpoint, I think the threat of being canceled is somewhat overblown," McPherson said.
John Adams contributed to this report.
