Explosive Growth for Square Cash App Pushes Its Downloads Past Venmo in Mobile Payments

Mobile payments app downloads are a great way to tell how the market’s going. After all, it’s a safe bet that no one will be using the app who hasn’t downloaded it, so it’s a good way to tell what the market’s maximum reach is. If the active users aren’t adding up closely to the total users, it’s also a good sign something’s amiss. Recently, downloads of Square’s Cash App added up to pass Venmo downloads for the very first time, thanks to a big surge of users in July.

The word came from a combination effort from Nomura Instinet and Sensor Tower, noting that Cash App actually cleared 33.5 million total downloads thanks to July’s sudden rush of users. Since Venmo stands at 32.9 million, that’s enough to clear it and by over half a million new users.

This actually puts Cash App in the leader slot, a move that Nomura Instinet analyst Dan Dolev suggests should give Square stock prices a goose as well. Indeed, reports suggest that Square shares actually saw a record intraday high at one point, and since Dolev suggested the app will provide between $30 million and $40 million to Square, there’s every reason for that encouragement. Indeed, Dolev suggested that, by 2020, Cash App could generate as much as $100 million annually.

Dolev even raised revenue estimates as a result, reports note, pushing the 12-month target to $86. Dolev also has a buy rating on Square shares, which suggests the gains may still be coming.

These figures are important to have; knowing just how far the Cash App can go against others in the field—including major competitors like Venmo—is a point worth knowing. The only real issue here is that it really doesn’t matter how many downloads an app has; active users are the really valuable point. If everyone on the planet downloads an app but only three people actually use it, then how popular is that app, really?

Still, given Cash App’s activity in the market, its recent growth of downloads bodes well for its active user count. In fact, I can’t help but wonder who got left to fuel Cash App’s recent gains.