Cash App: Commerce Systems

Expanding Cash App beyond peer-to-peer payments required designing systems that connect consumers, merchants, and transactions. I led design on early commerce initiatives, defining how users discover businesses, transact, and build ongoing relationships within Cash App. This work laid the foundation for marketplace interactions within the platform.

Role

Design lead for Commerce initiatives

Scope

Consumer + Merchant Fintech Systems

Expanding Cash App Beyond P2P Payments

Cash App began as a peer-to-peer payments product. As the platform grew, the company saw an opportunity to expand into commerce by enabling users to discover and transact with businesses directly inside the app.

This required designing new systems that connected consumers, merchants, and payments into a cohesive product experience.

My work focused on defining the product foundations for these marketplace interactions.

My Role

I led design across key product areas within Cash App Commerce, partnering closely with product, engineering, and data research teams to define the consumer and merchant interaction model, as well as collaborating closely with teams at Square and Afterpay to bridge merchant experiences within Cash App.

My work focused on designing the core systems that enabled users to discover merchants, transact, and manage purchases within Cash App.

The Opportunity

Cash App already had three important ingredients:

• millions of active consumers
• embedded payments infrastructure
• a growing network of merchants

However, these systems were largely disconnected.

The opportunity was to transform Cash App from a simple payment utility into a platform where users could discover businesses, complete transactions, and build ongoing relationships with merchants.

  1. Marketplace Cold Start

    Both consumers and merchants needed value immediately for the ecosystem to work

  2. Financial Trust

    Commerce inside a financial product requires extremely high clarity and reliability

  3. System Complexity

    Merchant tooling, consumer discovery, payments, and transaction flows all needed to work together

Commerce transaction systems focused on flows that allow users to complete purchases inside Cash App:

  1. Transaction process and clarity

  2. Payment confirmation

  3. Post-purchase visibility

I owned several projects under this category with the two most successful being Affiliate Linking and Loyalty + Cash App Pay.

Core Design Challenges

Key Systems Designed

Commerce Transactions

Cash App Pay + Loyalty

Affiliate linking allows users to attach and redeem deals with their Cash Card. Users benefit with saving money, and Cash App benefits through a revenue sharing model with the merchants that offer these incentives. I defined end-to-end flows for in-app discovery, web-based shopping, and automatic discount application at checkout.

Affiliate Linking

Cash App Pay + Loyalty brought Square’s in-store commerce capabilities into Cash App as part of the newly formed Commerce vertical. As lead designer on the Cash App side, I partnered closely with Square’s lead designer to translate point-of-sale payments and loyalty into a fast, consumer-first experience within Cash App.

The merchant relationship layer enables ongoing interaction between users and merchants. This area focused on:

• purchase history
• merchant identity
• repeat engagement

The highest impact experiences were around Loyalty (Cash App Pay + Loyalty bridged this system and Commerce Transactions). Other projects that I owned were around Merchant Profile, Loyalty, Incentives, and shopping in Cash App.

Merchant Relationship Layer

Loyalty in Cash App

Bringing Square merchant loyalty programs into Cash App so users can track rewards and redeem points directly within the product.

I led design on the consumer experience, defining how loyalty is surfaced, tracked, and redeemed within transaction flows. This work connected Square merchant systems with the Cash App ecosystem, making rewards visible and actionable, and strengthening ongoing relationships between users and businesses.

This work helped establish the foundations for commerce inside Cash App by connecting merchant identity, payments, and discovery into a cohesive system. It enabled Cash App to expand beyond peer-to-peer payments and into broader consumer and merchant interactions.

My leadership and joint collaborative work with Square on Merchant Loyalty integration work led to a 10.9% increase in loyalty redemptions, and a 10-20% relative increase in redemption rates. The work on Loyalty Onboarding increased success of onboarding completion for new customers by 22%, 10% higher retention rate for SMS linked customers, and 16% increase in customers interacting with loyalty.

Ecosystem Impact