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Users of Square Inc.’s Cash App can now buy and sell Bitcoin in all states, according to a tweet the company sent at mid-day Monday. The Bitcoin capability, which Square introduced in November as a pilot, is hardly a major business for the San Francisco-based payments company, but it is starting to account for measurable share of Square’s revenue and profits.
While Square does not release the number of Cash App users who are taking advantage of the service, it does disclose in its quarterly financial reports the revenue and profit it earns from Bitcoin activity. The service lets users buy and sell the digital currency, but it does not facilitate sending or receiving. Bitcoin exchange activity amounted to $37 million in the quarter ended June 30 and totaled $71 million for the first half of the year, Square reported, claiming a 4.5% and 4.8% share of all net revenue, respectively.
Profit on these Bitcoin exchanges totaled $420,000 in the second quarter and came to $643,000 for the first half, implying Square’s earnings from the business nearly doubled in the June quarter.
Square introduced Cash App in 2013 as a person-to-person payment service. The company in December said the app had attracted 7 million active users, but in a quarterly earnings call this month officials refused to update that number. The company has been more eager to talk about a Visa-branded Cash App card that in June piled up $250 million in purchases, compared to $90 million in December.
In related news, an Estonian company run by a former chief executive of Visa Inc. for the United Kingdom and Ireland announced it will allow users to send cryptocurrency to other wallets by using the recipient’s phone number, rather than a typically complicated wallet address.
The company, Crypterium, “makes buying, selling, and spending of cryptocurrency in everyday life as easy as possible, and that’s what will bring the next billions of people to using crypto,” said a statement from Marc O’Brien, who in May took over as chief executive of the startup. O’Brien served as CEO of Visa for the United Kingdom and Ireland from 2008 to 2014.
The company claims cryptocurrency transfers and transactions have been hampered by wallet addresses incorporating dozens of letters and digits, making it easy to mistype the address. A second problem is long transaction confirmation times caused by blockchain congestion. Crypterium says it solves the second problem by processing transactions off-chain.
