Eye on Block: Cash App Score Gains Visibility; Bakery Consolidates Under Square – Digital Transactions
Block Inc. will make its proprietary Cash App Score available to external lenders for the first time, while its Square acquiring unit lines up another retailer for its suite of point-of-sale services and hardware.
A scoring model once only used internally by Block for its set of lending products now will be available to external lenders, with San Francisco-based Nova Credit Inc. the first to use it. The Cash App Score is a cash-flow based credit score. It’ll be embedded directly into Nova Credit’s Cash Flow Intelligence Platform for lenders to review during their underwriting workflows. No new consumer credential is needed, Block says. Cash App Score launched in 2025.
Cash App Score draws on what Block calls “millions of real-time, first-party signals” from across the Cash App ecosystem, which includes spending, saving, repayment behavior, paycheck deposits, and peer-to-peer activity. It does not just rely on credit history and tries to give a view into a consumer’s broader financial behavior.
This new level of visibility also extends to Cash App users. They can view the score in the Money Tab of the app and choose to share the score with third-party lenders. They use Cash App to manage access to the score and related notifications.
The score has been used longest for Cash App Borrow, where it has approved 38% more customers at the same loss rate compared with traditional credit scores, Block says. Approximately 70% of active Borrow customers have FICO scores below 580. The base FICO score range is from 300 to 850.
In additional Block news, acquiring unit Square says Parsons Bakery, a 48-store chain in the United Kingdom, adopted multiple Square products for payment processing, loyalty, marketing, and e-commerce activity.
Parsons, a 100-year-old company, had been using different systems for payments, loyalty, and online ordering, creating a jumble of systems, Ben Paxton, Parsons managing director, says in a statement.
