Cash App, Paychecks2024–2025

Paycheckswin banking.

Role: Only designer
Surfaces: Direct deposit, Savings, Stocks, Bitcoin
Versions: 1.0, the ring · 2.0, goals and stocks
Timeline: 2024–2025

Overview

Problem: Paychecks are sticky: the customers who bring one rarely leave, and a paycheck opens the door to the rest of the platform. But they’re hard to win on features, since every bank promises early pay and a savings yield. And neither our tools nor the market’s reflected how people actually think about money: through their paycheck. Ours were scattered: Paid in Bitcoin in one place, Save automatically in another.
Opportunity: People think about money as paycheck in, spending out. Give the paycheck a home that matches, and it becomes the place to sell what only Cash App can do with it, and a way into our bigger goal: being people’s primary bank.
Solution: One Paychecks applet with top-tier status, and in it, automatic paycheck splits that let customers split any paycheck across anything available on the platform: cash, savings, bitcoin, stocks.

What shipped

Distribute paycheck: a ring showing 65% distributed across Savings, Stocks and Bitcoin — The ring

Savings split across goals: 20% of each paycheck, 5% each to Savings, Anniversary dinner, Gift for Will and Mexico — Goals

Stocks split: 20% of each paycheck, 5% each to Amazon, Apple, Invesco QQQ and Vanguard Mega Cap ETF — Stocks

Invest 40% of paycheck deposits in bitcoin: percentage, funding source, varying amount and price, no fees, then Confirm — Bitcoin

01 · One home

Put the whole paycheckin one place.

Our paycheck tools were scattered across the app. We pulled them into one Paychecks applet with top-tier status, built around the way people already think about money: paycheck in, spending out. At its heart, one feature distributes the whole paycheck.

Further down the Paychecks tab: Deposits, then Distribution, a ring at 95% cash balance and 5% savings, then Add paycheck

Then the forecast fell apart.

The first Paychecks was built around predicting the next one: when it lands, and how much. We tested it, and the forecasts were wrong too often, for too many people, to build a feature on. So we pivoted to what people control: splitting the paycheck they already have.

Exploration: a Paycheck sheet with a $814.50 ring from June 15, 2022, split into Cash balance, Savings, Stocks and Bitcoin — What we pivoted to: the split. The last paycheck as a ring, shares as rows, segments around a locked cash balance, then one arc for everything saved, set a destination at a time.

Exploration: Distribute paycheck at 73%, $724.46 based on a last paycheck of $814.00, with Cash, Savings, Stocks and Bitcoin rows — What we pivoted to: the split. The last paycheck as a ring, shares as rows, segments around a locked cash balance, then one arc for everything saved, set a destination at a time.

See your money.Then touch it.

No other bank could split a paycheck across savings, bitcoin and stocks, so the breadth we already had became the reason to switch, and the Paychecks applet put it in front of people. It became our way into the primary banking relationship, and it set up what came next: Cash App Green, and paycheck benefits like a market-leading savings rate and custom offers.

“Maybe the most magical tool in our toolbox.”

Engineering Manager, Cash App Banking