Square says that in December 7M customers used the Cash app and that Cash customers spent more than $90M using virtual and physical Cash cards
That's... pretty big? — Since Square's founding in 2009, CEO Jack Dorsey has been determined to build a consumer hit that complements the company's core payment-processing business.
Context & Ripple Effects
This February 2018 disclosure is the first hard evidence for Jack Dorsey's long-stated thesis that Square needed a consumer hit to sit alongside its merchant payment-processing business: 7 million monthly Cash App users and more than $90M spent on virtual and physical Cash cards turn 'complement' into a measurable second business.
The numbers that follow validate the early read. By Q4 2019 Square reported 24M monthly active users, up 60% YoY, and by mid-2020 the app had become Square's growth engine — bitcoin revenue of $306M exceeded the app's fiat revenue for the first time in Q1 2020, before Cash App generated $875M in bitcoin revenue in Q2.
First-order effects
- Square gains a consumer-side metric it can report next to gross payment volume, giving investors two growth curves instead of one — the 7M-user figure is the baseline every subsequent Cash App number is measured against.
- The $90M in card spend proves Cash customers transact off-app, not just peer-to-peer, which is what makes the card program — not the P2P feature itself — the monetization vehicle.
Second-order effects
- Once card spend is proven, Square extends the app into higher-margin activity: the related coverage shows Cash App revenue more than doubling to $159M by Q3 2019 and then compounding through bitcoin trading, which by 2021 contributes $1.76B of quarterly revenue.
- Cash App's rise reweights Square's stock story from a payments processor valued on GPV to a two-sided fintech — the WSJ's coverage attributes a 166% one-year stock gain specifically to the app's popularity.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Square's center of gravity shifts: the consumer app plus bitcoin becomes a revenue line comparable to merchant processing, making Square structurally a consumer-fintech company that also sells seller tools rather than the reverse.
- A payments company deriving a large share of revenue from bitcoin trading carries crypto-cycle exposure its processing business never had — a dependency visible in every Cash App-heavy quarter from 2020 onward.
The trend: Merchant payment processors are building consumer wallet apps as second engines, with trading features like bitcoin converting free P2P users into direct revenue.