The news: Neighborhoods on Cash App is shaping up to be one of the “biggest drivers” of user growth for Block, business lead Owen Jennings said on Block’s Q2 2026 earnings call. 

Initial engagement from users and sellers across Square and Cash App suggests that the network effects of Block’s business have a long runway for growth. 

• Square’s US GPV growth hit 10% in Q2 2026, the strongest growth since Q2 2023.
• And Cash App’s commerce enablement volume grew 17% YoY to $56.5 billion.

In light of Block’s overarching strong performance, the company raised its full-year guidance, anticipating $12.51 billion in gross profit. However, a forecast slowdown of gross profit growth in Q3, coupled with weak Bitcoin ecosystem numbers, sent Block shares down more than 6%.

Why this matters: Block can cross-pollinate both sides of its network through Neighborhoods. Early results have been promising:

• Annualized seller GPV on the platform crossed the $1 billion mark in June.
• Eight times as many new Square sellers were onboarded to Neighborhoods in July versus March.
• And within three quarters, 10% of participating Square sellers’ business on average comes from Neighborhoods followers.

Zooming out: Block is wielding more than just Neighborhoods to drive Square growth, leaning into key integrations to push its sellers in front of users where they start their food and dining discovery and research.

• Last month, Square unveiled a ChatGPT app and Claude plugin that lets consumers find sellers and complete transactions through AI conversational commerce.
• Users can now also find Square sellers and place orders in Google Maps’ Ask Maps feature when searching on their mobile devices for local eateries.

Visibility on Maps should give Square sellers a boost: 20% of local searches start on Maps, with Maps searches converting at almost twice the rate of traditional searches (41% to 22%), per Jasmine Business Directory. And users are moving toward voice search strategies like Ask Maps, with 16% of local “near me” searches for restaurants and shops starting with voice commands, per Keywords Everywhere.

Implications for payment providers: To increase the likelihood of users finding affiliated merchants, providers need to elevate their sellers on major search platforms from Maps, payment apps, FMNs, and traditional and agentic search platforms.

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