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Cash App was a big growth driver last year for Block Inc. and is expected to remain so as 2025 unfolds, the company said during a conference call late Thursday to discuss Block’s fourth-quarter results. Block is the parent company of the Square and Cash App businesses.
During the last quarter of 2024, monthly active users of the Cash App card reached 25 million, up from 23 million for the year-ago quarter. Overall, the card reached 57 million users, up from 56 million for the year-ago quarter. Cash App Borrow, a feature within Cash App that allows eligible users to access small, short-term loans, reached 5 million monthly active users by the end of 2024.
Active monthly users for Cash App Pay, which allows users to pay with their Cash App balance or a linked debit card, totaled 6 million. Monthly active users making deposits into their Cash App account totaled 2.5 million, a 25% from increase from the same period a year ago.
Block expects to see a “unique” growth opportunity for Cash App when it comes to Cash App Borrow and Afterpay, a buy now, pay later feature, on the Cash App card. This will lead to a “pronounced acceleration” of growth in the coming year, executives said.
“Cash App card at 25 million actives in December is an amazing distribution surface to launch new product initiatives through,” Amrita Ahuja, who serves as Block’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, said during the call with equity analysts.
Ahuja added that during the testing phase of Afterpay on Cash App card, Block saw nearly $150 million in originations. Block, which “methodically” tested the product for about a year, began rolling it out this week. “Afterpay on the Cash App card is another way for Cash App users to manage their money and drive increased spending on the Cash App card,” Ahuja said.
The Cash App Card has now “reached significant scale,” especially among Millennials and Gen Zer’s, Ahuja said. Block estimates 21% of all 18-to-21-year-olds in the United States used the Cash App Card in 2024.
Such penetration among these younger age groups “provides Afterpay on Cash App Card with a valuable opportunity to meet the spending habits of this demographic, expanding both usage and engagement,” the company said in the business-highlights portion of its shareholder letter.
The company is bullish about the potential growth opportunities for Cash App Borrow. During the past year, 43% of active Cash App Borrow users said they used the loan to help pay bills, while 33% said they used the loan to help “smooth” their cash flow between pay checks. “Our customers value the option to manage their cash flows through Cash App Borrow,” said Ahuja, who added that active Cash App Borrow users bring in 13% more inflows and conduct 6% more transactions than non-active users.
Cash App, which was introduced in 2013 as Square Cash, has built a $5 billion gross profit business, Block chairman and co-founder Jack Dorsey said in the company’s letter to shareholders. Block says its goal is to make Cash App the top provider of banking services to households in the U.S. that earn up to $150,000 per year.
On the technology front, Block has launched a project it calls “goose,” an open-source, on-machine artificial intelligence agent that works on top of any large-language model in the cloud or locally and that can be customized to the user’s needs. Dorsey on the call described the project as a “foundational” move that will position Block to become an AI leader.
Block also expects to begin rolling out Proto, its open Bitcoin mining system. Block says it will begin delivering the first mining chips later this year. “We are poised to take a significant amount of share in this space,” Dorsey said, adding the mining space has just one competitor.
Block posted gross profit of $8.89 billion for 2024, up 18% from the previous year. Cash App gross profit totaled $5.24 billion for the year, up 21% from 2023, and Square gross profit came to $3.6 billion, up 15% year-over-year. The company reported that as a whole it processed $240.8 billion in gross payment volume in 2024, up 5.8% from 2023.
