Cash App is redefining the world’s relationship with money by making it more relatable, instantly available, and universally accessible. As a Content Manager on the Internal Communications team, I build programs and content that help employees understand our mission, feel inspired by it, and align their own work to the bigger picture.
Top projects of 2023
The Exchange: Cash App’s intranet
Cash App had roughly 6 disparate systems containing information. Employees had no idea what was up-to-date, or where to find what mattered. To help, I coordinated a massive cross-functional team to launch The Exchange, built on Notion. Through user testing, I iterated on the content to ensure we prioritized what employees wanted most. Since launch in November 2023, The Exchange and its resources have reached nearly 75% of employees, many of whom are repeat users.
Survey: Gauging company-wide internal communications sentiment
With help from our Customer Insights team, I pitched and ran of Cash App’s first-ever sentiment survey on Internal Communications. This included drafting, socializing, and analyzing it. The survey was sent to a representative sample of employees (496) from every team across the globe, and the insights gleaned informed our team strategy for 2023 and 2024.
Cash App, Explained: Live events that unpack complex topics
I launched Cash App, Explained, a quarterly event series, to ensure employees worldwide have a shared understanding of important, but complex topics. I partner with subject matter experts across the business to translate their expertise into presentations that employees—regardless of their role or team—can understand. In 2023, one was on our customers and another was on how Cash App actually makes money. Besides offering key context on how these topics work in real life, I include moments of fun and delight—it’s paid off. While attendance for live events typically averages at 5-10%, Explained presentations have garnered anywhere from 15-25% company-wide attendance.
Content Enablement
Empowering people to use Cash App’s voice
No matter the team, employees at Cash are encouraged to share their work — but knowing the best way to explain it can be tough. I created this writing guide to enable folks to talk about their work in a way that aligns with our voice principles: upfront, approachable, to-the-point, and human.
Enabling people to share their work in the right places
Cash App has grown fast. Because of this, internal tools and systems got noisy. Employees feel frustrated they don’t know who to connect to, when, and where. To help, I created a channel guide (complete with decision tree) to help folks cut through the noise and understand the best way to share their work with the right people in the right places.
Writing samples
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Block reported Q3 earnings on November 2, Jack and Amrita covered a lot of ground. Before diving in, we want to acknowledge yesterday’s news about the cap and echo Jack’s words: we know what was shared may cause people to feel anxiety and unsettled for some time. As always, the goal of this newsletter is to help you stay informed on our business performance through the curation of key themes, financial highlights, and coverage from the Q3 report.
Key Themes
Rule of 40 by 2026. Jack shared that he believes Block will achieve Rule of 40 in 2026, driven by a combination of growth and profitability initiatives. We also reinstated formal guidance and previewed profitability in 2024, which is expected to improve compared to 2023. Read the shareholder letter for more detail and watch next week’s recording of Alex Anderson, Cash App’s F&S Lead, who will provide Cash-specific context on our Q3 performance.
Implementing a headcount cap. In yesterday's shareholder letter, Jack announced that Block will be “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.” For more information, see Jack’s internal note, and for details on how Cash App will approach this cap, please see Brian’s note.
Focus on primary banking. We shared that Cash App has a focused strategy on earning the primary banking relationship of our existing customer base in the US. Key supporting work streams we called out included continued focus on reliability, customer service, security, enhancing our banking feature set, and revisiting the positioning and packaging of Cash App’s financial services offerings.
Cash App Card as an entrypoint. We have seen customers adopt the card and then expand usage to other financial services products within Cash App like Savings, ATMs, Borrow, and Direct Deposit. Cash App Card reached 22 million monthly actives as of September, with approximately 30% of those transacting on any given day.
Notable Numbers
$984 Million: Cash App’s Q3 gross profit, up 27% year-over-year (YoY)
62 Billion: Overall inflows during Q3, up 21% YoY and 1% quarter over quarter
55 Million: Number of monthly transacting active customers, up 11% YoY
$1,132: Inflows per transacting active, up 8% YoY
1.43%: Monetization rate, up 8 basis points YoY
2 Million: Number of Cash App Borrow monthly actives as of September generating $1.4 billion in annualized volumes, both doubling since June
In the News
Media coverage focused on how Block’s Q3 earnings beat led to a strong stock reaction partially fueled by Cash App’s revenue and user growth. Specifically, the media focused on Borrow, which generated $900 million in short-term loans during Q3. Plus, the crypto trades honed in on Block’s bitcoin revenue and gross profit increase driven by Cash App.
Select Media Coverage
Bloomberg: Block Soars on Boosted Profit Outlook as Cash App Grows
Fortune: Block’s Bitcoin revenue grew nearly 40% while value of its Bitcoin holdings rose
Barron’s: Block Reaches ‘Turning Point’ for Efficiency. It Joins PayPal in Payment Stocks Rally.
CNBC: Block shares surge after earnings beat and increased full-year guidance
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Internally, our writing is **always** grounded in the below principles so that no matter who’s writing (or where), we sound consistent.
Upfront: We tell it like it is in service of helping people do their best work. We set clear expectations for outcomes, what’s in progress, to-dos, and due dates. We build trust through transparency about what we do/don’t know, can/can’t share or achieve.
Approachable: Our conversational style makes us relatable. We make things accessible and simple. **Simple doesn’t mean dumbing it down.** It *does* mean finding the clearest way to explain complex things so all the smart people at Cash–whether they’re on your team or not–know what you mean. We don’t hide behind corporate speak or inauthentic plays to emotion.
To-the-point: We explain what people *need* to know and why they should care, quickly. This means being mindful of your audience’s capacity to absorb information. So we prioritize what’s most important and make additional details accessible via links. We instill confidence by giving employees the info, tools, and context they need (but briefly so they can digest it on their own terms).
Human: We want you to feel authentic when you communicate. In more sensitive contexts, this may look like offering empathy, or sharing your own reaction to a situation. In celebratory situations, this may mean leaning into personality–using emojis, [shouting out your team](about:blank#slack-tips), or telling a quick story to make a point (oh! That reminds me about a time when… you get it).
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Hi team! Since 2013, we’ve gone from 0 to over 53 million active customers :exploding_head:. But who are our customers, really? How do they use our products? How can we empathize with them? Our Customers, Explained has the answers.
What: A LIVE presentation that’ll cover our growth story, who our customers are, why our network is so valuable to them, and what stops customers and non-customers from using Cash App.
Why: Customers are the thread that unite all of our teams. They’re the basis for how we make decisions and prioritize work, and understanding them means connecting more deeply with our mission.
Who: Hosted by our Head of Customer Insights), Marketing Insights Researcher), Voice of the Customer Specialist). Editorial Manager) will facilitate.
When: October 4 at 12:05pm PST / 3:05pm EST. Can’t make it? We'll share the recording via go/$Customers and go/$Explained.
Bring your questions. Bring your trivia a-game. Bring a colleague. Can’t wait to see you there!