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Square Inc. plans to let users of its Cash App mobile wallet make purchases with the app when shopping at merchants that use its payment-processing technology, as the fintech company looks to drive integration between the consumer and vendor sides of its business.
The company announced Monday that Cash App users will be able to make in-store payments with the app either by scanning a Square
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merchant’s QR code or by pressing a button on the mobile app. The company is starting to roll out the Cash App Pay technology to retail operators as a software update.
The ability for Cash App users to make in-store payments using the app has been a “frequent request” among the customer base, Cash App lead Brian Grassadonia said in a release. The company also offers a debit card that is linked to the Cash App and lets users make purchases at retailers more broadly using their mobile-wallet balances.
Square’s stock
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was off 0.6% in afternoon trading. Shares of Square have rallied 12.4% over the pats three months, while the S&P 500 index SPX has advanced 5.1%. Square shares are up nearly 70% in the past year.
Square’s merchant and consumers businesses long operated in their own realms, but the company has been showing a greater interest in connecting them recently. Earlier this year, Square linked its merchant loyalty program to the Cash App, making it possible for users who have earned rewards by shopping at Square retailers to manage those rewards inside the Cash App.
“We think one of our superpowers is the fact that not only do we have an ecosystem on the seller side that serves multiple verticals at once but we also have the buyer side in Cash App, and our goal over time is to realize more of these connections,” Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, also CEO of Twitter
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said on the company’s May earnings call.
The move won praise from analysts, who became even more enthusiastic about the potential for linkages between the two businesses once Square announced in August its intent to combine with buy-now-pay-later operator Afterpay Ltd.
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“Afterpay will be integrated into Seller and Cash App, strengthening the connection between these ecosystems,” Square said in an investor presentation outlining the $29 billion all-stock deal.
The Australian acquisition would accelerate Square’s effort to build “a two-sided platform,” Bernstein analyst Harshita Rawat wrote at the time, characterizing linkage of the Cash App with vendor functionality as “the holy grail for faster long-term growth.”
