- Block has rebranded Afterpay to Cash App Afterpay, embedding BNPL directly into Cash App. This move allows Cash App’s 57 million monthly users to access Pay Over Time products when shopping at partner merchants.
- The integration strengthens Block’s vision of Cash App as an all-in-one financial platform that combines banking, payments, investing, and now BNPL to drive deeper engagement with both consumers and merchants.
- The news is an indication that the BNPL space is heating up, with Cash App Afterpay now competing more directly with Klarna, which just secured an exclusive BNPL partnership with Walmart.
Block (formerly Square) announced it has rebranded Afterpay to Cash App Afterpay. The new brand will serve existing Afterpay customers while being embedded into Cash App, allowing eligible Cash App customers to access Afterpay’s Pay Over Time products when shopping online at partner merchant’s sites.
Block expects that as Afterpay becomes embedded into Cash App, merchant partners offering Afterpay’s Pay Over Time products can reach eligible customers in Cash App’s active monthly user base of 57 million people. Cash App was ranked among the top five most authentic brands to Gen Z, the brand’s target demographic, which may be the reason why Block chose to bring Cash App’s branding over to Afterpay.
“The scale of Cash App’s 57 million monthly actives means our merchant partners benefit from a larger network of customers, and eligible customers gain greater access to simple, fair, and accessible payment options outside of traditional systems,” said Global Head of Sales at Block and Co-founder of Afterpay Nick Molnar. “We believe that Cash App Afterpay will not only be an accelerant to Cash App growth, but also an accelerant in the growing preference towards BNPL options in the United States.”
Starting this week, Cash App customers shopping on the brand’s hundreds of thousands of merchant partner sites can select Afterpay at checkout to pay over time for their purchases. Customers will be able to manage their Pay Over Time transactions from merchant checkouts directly within Cash App. And while the brand name is changed, the user experience for Afterpay’s existing customers will remain the same.
Block released Cash App in 2013, five years before Zelle. At the time, Cash App most directly competed with Braintree’s Venmo, which was slow to gain traction; Braintree was acquired by PayPal that same year. Twelve years on, Cash App still has its roots in peer-to-peer payments, but it has now diversified into a more robust digital banking platform that enables users to hold funds, deposit their paychecks, spend their money using a QR code or cash, invest, manage their Bitcoin, and file their taxes.
Afterpay was acquired by Block in 2022 for $29 billion, marking one of the largest fintech acquisitions to date. The purchase indicated Block’s interest in expanding beyond payments into the broader financial services space, specifically into lending by leveraging Afterpay’s installment lending model to deepen ties with both consumers and merchants.
By fully integrating Afterpay into Cash App, Block is doubling down on its strategy to turn Cash App into a one-stop financial platform, further blending banking, payments, investing, and now, BNPL into a single ecosystem. It will also offer a boost to Cash App Afterpay, exposing the new brand to Cash App’s 57 million users. This lift will aid Cash App Afterpay in competing with the likes of brands like Klarna, which just announced it received a buoy of its own after Walmart selected it as exclusive BNPL provider.
Photo by Julio Lopez
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