Cash App lures BNPL card users

Block has attracted one million monthly active users since February to its Cash App debit card featuring Afterpay buy now, pay later options, positioning the card for further growth, the company’s chief financial officer said.

Cash App has let some of its 26 million active card users retroactively apply BNPL loans to their purchases, with Block further “ramping” the number of cardholders eligible for post-purchase loans, Block CFO Amrita Ahuja said Sept. 9 at an investor conference.

Ahuja is also chief operating officer at Block, which owns merchant services company Square as well as Cash App and Afterpay.

The company expects further financial benefits from the debit card-Afterpay combination in 2026 as the Cash App card becomes “a next-gen credit card with transparency and upfront understanding of fees that don’t trap our customers in (debt) death spirals,” she said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference.

Ahuja used the example of a consumer receiving $75 back from a $100 purchase of a pair of jeans and then repaying the $75 over four weeks.

The card’s headway underscores how Block has sought in recent years to transform Cash App into a full-featured banking platform, including direct paycheck deposits, small consumer loans, merchant payments and now a BNPL offering to merge debit and credit card attributes.

Cash App has extended $2 billion in lending, on an annualized run rate, since incorporating Afterpay loans on its debit card, she said.

“What we have seen so far, just in these first six months of operations, is incredibly encouraging,” she said. Block uses the same consumer scoring platform for Cash App BNPL loans as its other Cash App short-term loans “to underwrite 38% more customers than a traditional credit score company would do,” she said.

Much of Cash App’s lending growth has come from younger consumers wary of traditional credit cards, Block said in an April press release.

“Consumers are reevaluating their relationship with traditional credit, and are no longer willing to accept opaque fees or compounding interest, nor the stress that accompanies it,” the release said.

Block groups Cash App’s various products and Afterpay into its commerce category, which grew 16% in the second quarter compared to the same period of 2024, amounting to $183 billion in customer spending volume over the past year, the company said last month in its financial results.

Block is eager to “drive incremental demand of Cash App consumers into Square merchants” as the company deepens its connections and further sells across its consumer base, Ahuja said. Prodding Cash App users to become customers of Square retailers is “a unique super power we’ve been testing, but we’re really excited to bring the pair to a far greater scale in the months ahead,” she said.

In March, Block received federal regulatory approval to shift Cash App lending to its own bank, Salt Lake City-based Square Financial Services. Block is targeting about six million loan customers by the end of the year for the short-term lending, Ahuja said, up from five million at the end of 2024. Block’s short-term loan originations rose 95% to $18 billion in the second quarter from last year. Block targets a net profit margin on the loans – usually about $100 – above 20%, she said.

“When you think about the future of the company from a lending, acquiring or deposit perspective, SFS will likely have a hand to play,” Ahuja said.

Combining Afterpay with Cash App and Square small business and consumer loans “provide Block with a lending ecosystem that can increase access to multiple customer types and grow both sides of the counter, all at a scale that’s unmatched in the industry,” Block CEO Jack Dorsey wrote in a shareholder letter last November, explaining the company’s views on lending.

The company has been aiming to capitalize on Afterpay ever since it paid $29 billion to buy the then Australian BNPL provider in 2021.