Bitcoin-Friendly Cash App Tops PayPal in Google Play Store
Square's Cash App allows users to buy and sell bitcoin.
Square’s Cash App has achieved a key milestone on the road to mainstreaming bitcoin usage by becoming the most popular app in the finance category on the U.S. Google Play Store ahead of PayPal. The app, which has spent much of the past year gaining tremendous amounts of ground within the millennial market segment is now America’s most downloaded finance app on Google Play.
Earlier in August, CCN.com reported that Cash App overtook Venmo to go into second place on the ranking behind PayPal, with a steady growth rate of 154 percent. In the same month the company announced that it had enabled bitcoin buying and selling services for users in all 50 U.S. states.
Square Growth Driven by Bitcoin
2018 has seen Square record some impressive growth, revenue and profit numbers driven largely by the exploding popularity of bitcoin usage among Cash App users. In August, Square CFO Sarah Friar remarked that the company is “seeing real growth” as a result of the strong performance of Cash App ever since the company enabled bitcoin trading services. At the time, she also revealed that Cash App was at number 15 and rising in the overall top 30 rankings on the App Store.
Earlier in the same month, the company revealed that it recorded a 100 percent increase in cryptocurrency profits in Q2 over Q1 despite the persistent bear market. Nevertheless, the company insists that while cryptocurrency may play a prominent role in future products and new versions of existing products, it is not viewed as a key monetisation engine. The goal Friar says, is to improve overall utility in Cash App.
Square CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has previously stated that he envisions a future where bitcoin is adopted as the currency of the internet. According to him, Square’s growth strategy is to enable people to transact with each other seamlessly by plugging inefficiencies in existing payment frameworks, be that through bitcoin or fiat. As yet unconfirmed, there is speculation that Square will introduce additional bitcoin-related functionality such as bitcoin payment processing or even a cryptocurrency exchange.
The news will come as a yet another significant piece of good news for Square, which has enjoyed a very good year in contrast to the state of many organizations with exposure to the cryptocurrency market. In June, the company achieved an all-time high market capitalisation after being becoming one of only a handful of entities to win a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services.
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