Block’s strong Q1 & Cash App’s huge growth potential 🚀; Canada shows confidence in neobanks but lots of challenges remain 🇨🇦📱; What if Bitcoin isn’t a hedge at all? One metric you need to watch 📉

Good Morning FinTech, 10 May

Good day Everyone,

And happy Tuesday! Monday was huge and important for all things FinTech (in case you missed it, read here). Today continues keeping the bar high as we will look at Block (why it’s undervalued as well as Cash App’s huge growth potential), maturing neobanking market in Canada, and see how good of a hedge (if at all) Bitcoin is. So let’s just jump into 3 FinTech stories you cannot miss today:

Block’s strong Q1 & Cash App’s massive growth potential 🚀

Earnings call ☎️ FinTech heavyweight Block, which is led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, reported rather strong results with first-quarter operating profit that topped Wall Street targets.

Block's shares rose 10% in extended trading even though the company, formerly known as Square, reported a lower-than-anticipated adjusted profit.

Key numbers 📊 Here’s what you need to know from Block’s 1Q2022:

• Block’s gross payment volume (GPV) surged 31% year over year (YoY) in Q1, hitting $43.5B.

• Monthly active users averaged 21 transactions across Block’s ecosystems, and March had the strongest monthly Cash App engagement. Increased adoption of the Cash App card and direct deposits fueled growth for the peer-to-peer (P2P) payments app.

• Monthly active Cash App users sent more than 350,000 leads to Afterpay sellers in Q1 as the $29B M&A starts paying dividends.

• Block also started letting Cash App users send and receive Bitcoin to compatible external wallets via the Lightning Network. BTC is one of the core elements of the Block ecosystem.

So what’s next? Despite the fact that the Block is severely undervalued right now, Cash App is where our eyes should be as it has massive growth potential. Here’s the takeaway: