Block

We've been named to CNBC's World's Top Fintech Companies list in the Payments category. This year we've been in go mode, and this recognition reflects it. We're building intelligence and interfaces for our customers with urgency and purpose across Square, Cash App, and our broader ecosystem. Full list here: https://lnkd.in/e2M5gzjX

The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services’ new report on the rise of fraud and scams highlights the growing sophistication of financial scams and the importance of cross-sector collaboration to address them. I’m proud of the work our teams at @Block contributed to help inform the committee’s findings and recommendations. Several themes from our @Cash App research on fighting scams are reflected in the report, including: • Scams often begin well before a payment is made, frequently originating outside of payment platforms. • Payment-level interventions can make a meaningful difference. Cash App reduced its scam rate by roughly 70% through real-time monitoring and features such as click-through warnings, attestations, and payment blocking. • A common scam taxonomy would improve information sharing across the private sector and government agencies. • Reducing statutory and regulatory barriers to information sharing can strengthen efforts to combat fraud across industries. This work reflects a collaborative effort across Policy, Legal, Product, Risk, Communications, and many other teams. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the research, engagement, and advocacy behind this important work. More in POLITICO here: https://lnkd.in/gjjCiCND

Block just launched Buzz, a free, open source workspace built on Nostr that lets AI agents join channels and threads as full members alongside humans. By Frederic Lardinois

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

Today we’re releasing Buzz 🐝 The most productive builds with AI are where people and agents collaborate, with same context, in a shared space, to build on each other’s work. It didn’t exist before today, so we built Buzz, a groupchat platform built on the Nostr protocol that is designed for teams of people and agents to work together. How is Buzz different: - It’s model-agnostic - Decentralized - Self-sovereign - Open source Come build with us:  buzz.xyz / github.com/block/buzz

One year after the FDIC approved Square Financial Services to originate and service Cash App Borrow loans, we're sharing a closer look at what we've learned from expanding access to eligible customers. Over the past year: - More than 15 million Cash App actives have used Borrow. - We've originated more than $27 billion in loans.  - Borrow customers span the income spectrum. Among customers who report using the product for personal loans, a majority (56%) report household incomes above $70K. The results reinforce something we've long believed: expanding access to credit and lending responsibly are not competing goals. By incorporating a broader view of a customer's recent financial behavior alongside traditional credit signals, we can responsibly expand access while maintaining a disciplined approach to lending. Learn more about our approach to responsible lending and how we'll continue evolving Borrow: https://lnkd.in/dJ4d6J6f

When an AI agent acts on your behalf, it shouldn't become you. Think of a pizza delivery driver, where they get just enough information to complete the delivery to your address, not sign you up for cat fact mailers. Our engineering team published a deep dive on what we built to solve this: https://lnkd.in/eye4dTb3

Big news from our open-source R&D initiative at Block! Since 2019, Spiral has been building and funding open-source bitcoin projects to make money more open, secure, and accessible. Today, they're expanding that mission to open-source AI by welcoming the goose core developers from Block to the team. goose originated at Block and was donated to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), part of the The Linux Foundation, to help ensure AI remains a neutral public good rather than infrastructure controlled by a single company. Spiral's initial areas of focus will be evolving goose into a first-class foundation for building agentic applications through the goose Development Kit (GDK), growing awareness of the project and the applications built on top of it, and supporting open-source AI builders through its grant program.

Another customer call... This time, we sat down with two longtime Square sellers - Partners Coffee and Housing Works - to understand their operational realities, how they've grown with Square, and where we need to keep building. ☕ Partner Coffee (Square since 2014) runs four locations and called Square's new AI tools a "game changer" for their managers. They use tools like ManagerBot to analyze inventory and sales data faster than before. 🏠 Housing Works (Square since 2018) operates nine thrift shops and a bookstore cafe. Their retail revenue provides unrestricted funding that powers political advocacy and programs government grants won't cover. Both teams highlighted how quickly new employees get up to speed with the hardware and software, and the value of integrating systems. They pushed us on areas where we can strengthen the technology for their teams. These conversations help us make every layer we're building better.