Square breezes past Venmo as Cash App crypto move pays off

Square’s crypto push is starting to bear fruit, leading to a significant increase in downloads for its Cash App.

The total number of downloads is now at 33.5 million. That exceeds Venmos’ (PayPal’s mobile money service) 32.9 million for the first time, according to research from Sensor Tower and Nomura.

It grew three times faster than its competitor in July, just one month after Jack Dorsey’s firm secured a virtual currency licence from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).

Nomura Instinet analyst, Dan Dolev estimates that Square’s offering will generate $30 million to $40 million in adjusted revenue for the year. “If the Cash App continues to grow rapidly, the business could reach or even exceed $100 million in sales by 2020, even without deeper active user penetration,” he says. “With impressive user growth and ongoing decoupling from Bitcoin, we believe Square’s monetisation efforts are increasingly bearing fruit.”

Expanding Bitcoin reach

Square fully launched a feature to enable users to buy and sell Bitcoin in its Cash App in January. But while revenues from trading the cryptocurrency hit $34 million in the first three months, the cost of buying Bitcoin to run the service amounted to £33.9 million.

Undettered, earlier this week it tweeted that the ability to buy Bitcoin was now available in all 50 US states. Previously it had been blocked from users in New York, Georgia, Hawaii and Wyoming as those states had more restrictions in place regarding cryptocurrency transactions.