Neighborhoods, a loyalty platform built into Square’s point-of-sale systems that connects businesses with Cash App customers, experienced a flood of new retail and restaurant partners this summer, growing nearly 10-fold since June and adding more than 30,000 sellers to the network.
Block, the California-based parent company of Square and Cash App, announced the expansion of Neighborhoods August 25, with plans to ramp auto-enablement across the United States.
Last October, Square initially launched Neighborhoods, which ultimately represented $1 billion in annualized gross payment volume as of June—up more than 220 since March. The stark uptick in GPV since June resulted from the platform becoming available on additional Square hardware, which more than doubled the number of eligible merchants.
Looking to grow adoption rates for Neighborhoods, Block is tapping into Cash App’s more than 59 million monthly active users. According to figures from Block, Square serves more than 4.5 million partner merchants, with hundreds of thousands of food and beverage sellers using the company’s technology.
Accompanying the expansion announcement, Cash App will initially fund Local Cash, offering businesses a means to reward customers and incentivize repeat visits at no additional cost.
“Neighborhoods helps local businesses get discovered by new customers and then turn that first visit into a lasting relationship,” Owen Jennings, Block’s executive officer and head of business, said in a press release. “We’re seeing a business’s most loyal customers come back more often, spend more, and that creates the repeat business that helps local businesses grow and thrive.”
Partner merchants appear on a map within the Neighborhoods tab in Cash App, where users can follow participating businesses. Similar to communication channels restaurant brands often use for promotions on first-party digital channels, sellers can reach followers directly with marketing campaigns and entice new customers with Cash App-funded bonuses in the app.
Customers at partner businesses can earn Local Cash—a rewards currency used on the platform—equal to 10 percent of their order, up to $10 per eligible transaction. Guests can redeem those rewards during future visits. The mechanism bears similarities to Shop Cash on the Shop app.
“Because it’s integrated with Square and Cash App, the [Neighborhoods] experience feels seamless for our team and our customers, from updating menu availability in real time to letting customers order ahead and redeem Local Cash in store,” Hayden Swiderski, an applications order manager at Night Swim Coffee, said in a press release. “We’ve seen it become part of people’s daily routines, including a longtime customer and dad on the go who uses it almost every day to order ahead before work.”
To spur the expansion of Neighborhoods, Block aims to increase awareness of the platform among Square merchants’ employees.
