Cash App’s Next Act: From P2P App to Everyday Bank

Watch more: The Digital Shift: Block’s Owen Jennings

When Owen Jennings joined Cash App a decade ago, it was a simple way to send money to a friend. Now it’s one of the largest consumer finance platforms in the country, home to the fourth largest debit card program in the United States and millions of customers who treat it as their primary bank account, he told Karen Webster.

That evolution is on full display in the company’s new bundled release. Eleven updates that pull Cash App’s many pieces into one connected financial experience. Jennings told Webster that the intent wasn’t to roll out features one by one, but to make a statement about what Cash App has become and where it’s headed.

Building a Financial Ecosystem

The new Cash App release marks a shift from a product that helped people send money to one that helps them manage it. Jennings said the team learned from Square’s success in releasing products in coordinated bundles that showcase progress and speed. The pace of development across Block, he said, has accelerated as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes central to how new services are built and deployed.

“We’re really seeing development velocity pick up at Block and at Cash App in particular,” Jennings told PYMNTS. “A lot of that’s coming through the usage of AI tools. We’ve been able to build an incredible amount of features and products over the past few months, and we really thought we had a compelling bundle that was worthwhile to go out and tell our story.”

At the core of this release is Moneybot, Cash App’s AI-driven guide designed to make the app more proactive. Instead of waiting for users to ask for help, Moneybot analyzes transactions and habits to surface insights about spending, saving and planning. Built into the interface, it aims to make managing money feel natural and personalized, a shift from tools that simply execute transactions to ones that anticipate what users need next.

“Our approach is really different,” he said. “We want Moneybot to prompt the customer. Even in V1, we’re able to take in millions of data points and prompt you — ‘Hey, you spent too much on bagels this week,’ or ‘Hey, it’s time for rent.’ That proactive versus reactive nature feels really different.”

Serving a Real-Time Economy

The redesign also reflects how people earn and access money today. The traditional two-week pay cycle doesn’t fit the realities of gig and creator work, where income flows daily or even instantly. Jennings said Cash App’s role is to make sure that those funds are immediately available for use. A crucial capability, he said, for a generation that prioritizes liquidity and control over timing.

That thinking also inspired Cash App Green, a new status tier for users who treat the app as their main financial account, even if they don’t receive traditional direct deposits. The Green tier opens access to priority support, savings enhancements, higher borrow limits, and fee-free ATM access. Branding it, Jennings said, gives users something to talk about, and feel special when they use it.

Credit, Crypto and Collaboration

Credit is getting a rethink, too, Jennings said. The integration of Afterpay directly into Cash App gives users the flexibility to apply buy now, pay later after making a purchase. Jennings said the move reflects a better understanding of how younger consumers want to manage credit, without annual fees, opaque terms, or revolving debt traps.

Bitcoin, long a feature of Cash App, is also moving closer to everyday use. Jennings said Block’s philosophy is simple: Bitcoin is “a better form of money.” With the new update, users can send Lightning payments in dollars, with Cash App handling the conversion to and from bitcoin behind the scenes. It’s a practical step toward what he called the “true vision of bitcoin as peer-to-peer digital cash.”

Some of the updates, like Pools, have been live quietly for months. Jennings said its early success showed how customers collaborate financially, a sign of what he described as the rise of “multiplayer money,” where financial tools reflect shared goals and expenses rather than solitary accounts.

Safety Built In

As Cash App moves deeper into full-service banking, Jennings emphasized that safety is embedded in every product. He said Cash App uses real-time machine learning checkpoints across every transaction, supported by collaboration between its development, risk, compliance and legal teams.

“When I joined Cash App 10 years ago, we were just a peer-to-peer app,” Jennings said. “Now customers are truly banking with us, so the level of trust required is meaningfully different. That’s why we’ve built trust into every layer — real-time ML checkpoints, unified risk and compliance workflows, and features like instant notifications and allow lists for parents of teen users.”

He called the new release both a milestone and a starting point. A marker of how far Cash App has come and where it plans to go. The combination of expanded banking access, unified credit experiences, social money tools, bitcoin-enabled commerce, and AI-driven navigation, Jennings said, is designed to meet customers where their financial lives already are.