Square Cash Offers Free In-App Stock Trading

The popular Cash app, owned by Square, now has the ability for users to buy and sell stocks.

CNBC is reporting that customers who use the San Francisco-based app can even buy fractions of a stock, an option that isn’t available for rivals like the Robinhood app.

For example, stocks like Berkshire Hathaway class A shares were trading for $315,000 on Thursday, but customers can buy a portion of them for as little as $1.

The Cash App has 15 million active users a month.

“Really proud of the team for making buying stocks and building wealth accessible to more people,” Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet. Dorsey is also CEO of Twitter.

Robinhood has been popular in the space, getting a $7.6 billion valuation and a user base of more than 6 million. It’s popularity saw an influx of similar moves from companies like Fidelity and Charles Schwab, who recently cut fees to zero.

The news helped to bolster shares in Square, which are up almost 10 percent on the year and 5 percent on Thursday (Oct. 24).

Square has previously dabbled in trading — offering to trade bitcoin a few years ago. 

Earlier this year, it started allowing users to deposit bitcoin.

On Square’s support page at the time, the company said that “support for bitcoin deposits to third-party wallets is coming soon. In the meantime, you can transfer profits from selling bitcoin to any bank account or debit card linked to your Cash App.”

Square brought in about $65.5 million in revenue by market cap from bitcoin in Q1 of 2019, although actual profit was $832,000. The company also has a bitcoin-specific unit called Square Crypto, which is hiring developers to work on bitcoin blockchain. The company recently hired former Google Director Steve Lee for the team.

Square also offers small business loans and has a Visa debit card linked to the app, which lets users treat it like a bank account. The company has also applied to get a bank charter in Utah, a move that would allow it to start accepting deposits.