Block’s Cash App keeps outrunning Square as gross profit rises 25%

Block, Inc. reported second-quarter 2026 results on August 5 showing total gross profit of $3.17 billion, up 25% from a year earlier. The company’s two engines grew at very different speeds: Cash App gross profit rose 31% to $1.97 billion, while the Square seller business grew 13% to $1.16 billion. Adjusted operating income reached a record $864 million — a 27% margin — and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.02 were up 65% year over year.

The widening gap between Cash App and Square is the story that has defined Block for several quarters now. Cash App, the consumer peer-to-peer and financial-services app, is both larger and faster-growing than the Square merchant business that Block was originally built around. That reweighting matters because the two segments have different economics and different competitive sets — Cash App competes for consumer financial relationships against neobanks and payment apps, while Square competes for merchants against a crowded field of point-of-sale and payments providers.

Block reports its performance in gross profit rather than revenue, a choice the company argues better reflects the economics of a payments business where large sums flow through as processing volume without belonging to Block. Gross profit strips out the pass-through cost of moving money and isolates what the company actually keeps, which is why it is the headline metric management steers by and the one most useful for comparing the two segments’ contribution.

The record 27% adjusted operating margin and the 65% jump in adjusted EPS point to a company converting its growth into profitability more efficiently than in prior years, after a period in which Block prioritized expansion and investment over margins. Raising full-year guidance — to $12.51 billion in gross profit and $4.02 in adjusted diluted EPS — signals management’s confidence that the trajectory holds through the rest of 2026, though guidance is a forecast rather than a result and remains subject to consumer-spending and competitive conditions across both segments.