Block Cuts 8% of Staff Citing ‘Strategy’ and ‘Performance’ Issues

Financial services company Block has reportedly laid off 8% of its workforce.

The job cuts impact 931 people, TechCrunch reported, citing a Tuesday (March 25) email from Block Co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey.

In his message, Dorsey says the cuts are for strategic reasons (391 people) or to eliminate workers who perform below company standards (460 people). Block will also lay off 80 managers as it tries to “flatten” its organization, he added.

A spokesperson for Block declined to comment when reached by PYMNTS Wednesday (March 26) morning.

The company, which owns mobile payments platform Cash App and point-of-sale/payments firm Square, is also closing several hundred open positions, aside from those that have already moved to the offer stage, crucial operations roles and key leadership positions.

“None of the above points are trying to hit a specific financial target, replacing folks with AI, or changing our headcount cap,” the email reads. “They are specific to our needs around strategy, raising the bar and acting faster on performance, and flattening our org so we can move faster and with less abstraction.”

These layoffs follow a round of job cuts early last year, in which the company eliminated 112 positions as part of a larger cost-cutting effort.

“We are creating an absolute cap on the number of people we have at the company, held firm at 12,000 people until we feel the growth of the business has meaningfully outpaced the growth of the company,” Dorsey had written in a letter to shareholders a few months earlier.

A regulatory filing from late last month said that Block had 11,300 staff members worldwide as of December of 2024.

PYMNTS wrote last week about Block’s push into the direct lending space, with Square Financial Services getting FDIC approval to make consumer loans directly to borrowers, using Cash App Borrow.

“The announcement represents a shift, as the firm had previously made the loans through its external banking partner,” that report said. “By bringing the loan originating and servicing functions in house, Block retains the revenue streams associated with that lending.”

The move also marks an expansion of Square Financial Services’ footprint, as the operation had already been offering Square sellers business loans and savings accounts.

The push into short-term lending is also happening at a time when, per PYMNTS Intelligence research, traditional avenues for credit access are narrowing. For example, 29% of subprime consumers have seen their applications for credit cards denied, versus 12% of consumers who fall into the super-prime category.