Block has agreed to pay $45 million to 46 U.S. states over how it handled fraud on Cash App, its money-transfer and digital-banking app with 59 million active users. The action is another sign that states are stepping up financial enforcement as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has pulled back under the Trump Administration. And it may shed light on a pending New York case involving alleged fraud on Zelle.
In a New York State court filing tied to the $45 million settlement announced today, Block was accused of a range of infractions, such as misrepresenting that Cash App had the security of a traditional bank, misleading customers that their balances were FDIC-insured, failing to have effective fraud-prevention procedures and neglecting to investigate consumers’ reports of unauthorized transactions.
Cash App didn’t have an active customer-support phone number until 2021–before then, a published customer-service number merely included a pre-recorded message directing users to its app for support.
Texas and Oregon led the investigation, according to press releases. The $45 million settlement will be divided up among the 46 states, with Texas receiving $5 million, Oregon getting $3 million and New York collecting $1.6 million.
The new court order reaffirms that Block is required to pay up to $120 million from a January 2025 CFPB enforcement action, when the fintech was accused of fraud and compliance failures. Though the Trump Administration dismissed many of the other CFPB orders that were doled out during the Biden Administration–including one against Zelle for not doing enough to prevent fraud–this one remains intact.
In today’s court filing, Block didn’t admit wrongdoing and said it was agreeing to the judgment “solely for the purpose of concluding this matter.” A Block spokesperson said the agreement relates to “a previously disclosed legacy matter that primarily relates to historical aspects of our business. Cash App has made significant investments in consumer protection, customer service, and compliance in order to safeguard and serve the tens of millions of Americans who rely on Cash App to meet their banking and credit needs.”
Over the past two years, Block has been in regulators’ crosshairs more than almost any other fintech. Beyond today’s enforcement action and the early 2025 CFPB settlement, last year it received an $80 million fine from multiple states and a $40 million fine from the New York Department of Financial Services over anti-money-laundering failures.
In a 2021 Forbes investigation into fintech’s fraud problem, we reported that rental car companies and other fintechs had blocked transactions from Cash App due to concerns of high fraud rates, with one fintech CEO saying that Cash App’s business-to-business support for troubleshooting fraud issues “was almost non-existent.”
As part of the new settlement, Block made several commitments, including implementing a “comprehensive compliance management system,” not misleading customers regarding its fraud-protection capabilities, having live phone support available to customers for “at least 13.5 hours a day” and responding to consumers’ complaints of unauthorized transactions within three business days.
The new court order against Block may shed insight into the big, pending New York state case against money transfer app Zelle, where Attorney General Letitia James has accused Zelle’s operator Early Warning of allowing fraud to proliferate. “The large settlement with Cash App makes a negotiated settlement with Zelle more likely, as the basic allegations around fraud risk disclosure and fraud prevention are similar,” says Todd Baker, a financial services consultant and senior fellow at Columbia University’s business and law schools.
An Early Warning spokesperson told Forbes that fraud and scams committed against Zelle users “have always been exceptionally low” and that the attorney general’s claims “are not supported by either the facts or the law, and we are vigorously defending this baseless lawsuit.” The next step in that case is for the court to decide on Zelle’s motion to dismiss it.
Baker adds that the case against Zelle will be more difficult to prove because the banks that co-own Zelle, not Zelle itself, are responsible for compliance rules, and Zelle isn’t actively soliciting customers the way Cash App is.
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