Block

Industries included in the sector are advertising, diversified outsourcing services, and financial data services.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Business Services

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

Fortune 500

The 26th edition of the list shows how much esteem Big Tech giants command among other business leaders.

World's Most Admired Companies

These innovative companies are laying the foundations for robust growth—and outsize returns for shareholders.

Future 50-2023-Block Inc

The fintech company formerly known as Square has been growing rapidly on the strength of its services for merchants—including credit card payment processing and data analytics—and its CashApp peer-to-peer payment tool. Net profits remain elusive as the company invests in building and marketing new features, but Block is still on pace to top $20 billion in revenue in 2023.

The Future 50

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

Just as it dominates our economy, Big Tech now dominates Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation.

See which workplaces made this year's list.

GPTW Financial Services Industry Large 2022-Block

Employees say: 
 
“Square is truly the best company that I've ever worked for in my career. There is a shared sense of pride and responsibility around virtually everything that we do. Our People team and executives truly care about doing the right thing and building something that will far outlive each of us. There's no fear that prevents us from taking principled risks, and we are not afraid to experiment and try new things. We are a collection of the kind of people that can change the world.”

Best Large Workplaces in Financial Services and Insurance

Based on employee reports, Bay Area-headquartered companies excel at fostering wellness.

GPTW Bay Area Large 2022-Square

Employees say: 
 
“Management is generally very transparent and makes a good-faith effort to address any employee concerns. The most unique aspect is how open they are with providing safe spaces to discuss cultural or political events that impact people's lives outside of work. They understand that it's sometimes unreasonable to expect people to compartmentalize their emotional or personal selves and leave that at home, and are willing to have difficult conversations about a variety of issues.”

25 Best Large Workplaces in the Bay Area

To determine millennials' workplace preferences, Fortune's research partner Great Place to Work analyzed feedback representing more than 6.1 million U.S. employees.

GPTW 2022 Millennials List Large-Square

Employees say: 
 
“The culture of work-life balance. People are free to be who they are and interact in a way that is personable, but not forced. People of all different backgrounds and personalities are hired and encouraged to be themselves and bring their unique talents to the table. In terms of work-life balance, I've never worked somewhere that employees are encouraged to take time for themselves when they need it. The company talks the talk but also walks the walk. It's amazing and I feel privileged to be part of it.”

100 Best Large Workplaces for Millennials

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

Resilience and the capacity for reinvention have never been more important.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-323-Square

The digital payments company runs two main businesses: point-of-sale technology for small and medium businesses, including its flagship Square Reader, and the Cash App, which features peer-to-peer financial transactions and cryptocurrency trading. In March, Square reached an agreement to acquire majority ownership in streaming service Tidal, and in May, the company announced it was expanding into Ireland. Square's first quarter 2021 report showed revenue increased more than 200% year over year.

Explore this year's ranking of the 50 companies with the best long-term growth potential.

Future 50-2020-Square

Square, which was once best known for its little white plug-in credit card swipers—as well as being Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s side hustle—has grown into a major force in payments and banking in its own right. With a stock price that has tripled so far in 2020, Square’s market value has surpassed that of Goldman Sachs. What has investors so revved up? Likely its shiny new banking license (approved in March) and its Cash App, a peer-to-peer payments and cryptocurrency-trading service whose rapid growth has made it a rival to PayPal’s Venmo. Next up: a possible acquisition of Credit Karma’s tax-preparation business.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

Fortune's proprietary methodology allows us to zero in on the 50 global firms that are best poised to deliver—and continue delivering—above average gains.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

Company Info

Founded

Industry Vertical

U.S. Employees

Sites

HQ Location

Web Address

Date info provided (companies may opt to keep some data confidential)

Future 50

Overall Score

Sector

Industry

Current All-Star Rank

Previous All-Star Rank

Industry Rank

Previous Industry Rank

Innovation

People Management

Use of Corporate Assets

Social Responsibility

Quality of Management

Financial Soundness

Long-Term Investment Value

Quality of Products/Services

Global Competitiveness

Block (SQ): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

legacy

block

Block (SQ): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Jason Karsh

Crypto firms offer no easy way to pass on your Bitcoin—it’s time for that to change

/crypto/2025/03/04/crypto-firms-offer-no-easy-way-to-pass-on-your-bitcoin-its-time-for-that-to-change/

Andrew Nusca

How the U.S. could (and should) respond to DeepSeek

/2025/01/29/how-the-u-s-could-and-should-respond-to-deepseek/

Leo Schwartz

Block launches open-source AI agent Goose as Jack Dorsey praises DeepSeek’s development approach

/2025/01/28/ai-deepseek-block-jack-dorsey-cash-app-open-source-goose-agent/

Block agrees to pay up to $120 million in refunds to resolve Cash App fraud

/2025/01/16/jack-dorsey-block-cash-app-consumer-financial-protection-bureau/

FTC sues Deere over repair restrictions

/2025/01/16/ftc-sues-deere-over-repair-restrictions/

https://fortune.com/2025/01/16/jack-dorsey-block-cash-app-consumer-financial-protection-bureau/?itm_source=parsely-api

Emma Burleigh

California beats out Texas and New York for the most Fortune 500 companies

https://fortune.com/2024/06/04/fortune-500-california-most-companies/?itm_source=parsely-api

Kali Hays

Jack Dorsey is about to overhaul Block in a reorg he warns may feel 'big and disruptive or uncomfortable'—internal memo

https://fortune.com/2024/07/25/jack-dorsey-block-square-cash-app-entire-reorg-disruptive-uncomfortable-internal-memo/?itm_source=parsely-api

Jack Dorsey’s Block will let employees choose cash instead of stock compensation

https://fortune.com/2025/01/06/jack-dorsey-block-square-employees-choose-cash-instead-of-stock-compensation/?itm_source=parsely-api

Block launches open-source AI agent Goose as Jack Dorsey praises DeepSeek's development approach

https://fortune.com/2025/01/28/ai-deepseek-block-jack-dorsey-cash-app-open-source-goose-agent/?itm_source=parsely-api

Exclusive: Jack Dorsey’s Block plans more layoffs just days after cuts at Tidal

https://fortune.com/2024/11/01/jack-dorsey-block-layoffs-tidal/?itm_source=parsely-api

22 CEOs who founded their Fortune 500 companies

https://fortune.com/2024/06/04/fortune-500-ceos-founders/?itm_source=parsely-api

Exclusive: Employees at Jack Dorsey’s Block were ordered not to discuss board member Jay-Z amid more layoffs

https://fortune.com/2024/11/07/block-jack-dorsey-jay-z-layoffs/?itm_source=parsely-api

Luisa Beltran

Block shares are undervalued and underappreciated, says senior BoA analyst

https://fortune.com/2024/08/16/block-square-jack-dorsey-undervalued-underappreciated-stock-payments-cash-app/?itm_source=parsely-api

https://fortune.com/2025/01/29/how-the-u-s-could-and-should-respond-to-deepseek/?itm_source=parsely-api

Introducing the inaugural Fortune Fintech Innovators Asia list, a first-time list showcasing 60 leading companies shaping the future of fintech in Asia.

Fortune Fintech Innovators Asia 2024

Franchise_Lists

The fortune. Fintech innovators list showcases companies transforming the lives of Asia's consumers. Fintech companies in this dynamic region are shaking up the way we shop, pay, ensure invest and Bank Asia is the place where fintech innovation is happening on a scale unseen anywhere in the US or Europe. It's also the place where hundreds of companies are investing billions of dollars to compete for trillions in revenue. Asia is also the place where financial technology is improving the lives of consumers. Like nowhere else, we highlight the region's leading fintech companies and their achievements. We've selected 60 companies in five categories, Blockchain and crypto digital banking payments in sure tech and wealth tax. It's great to be on the list. It's a growing recognition of Blockchain, crypto fintech, how it's going to be much more important going forward. Very exciting to be in this uh payment industry, especially right now where there are so many innovations, there are so many changes um transformation when it feels great to be recognized, the efforts of the 2000 strong employees of G Gas, the innovation that we've done towards our vision of finance for all, for all Philippines. We're obviously honored as a proudly Singaporean business. We're still growing our company. We're looking for great people to join our team and to expand our offering in Singapore and beyond.

Grayscale Investments is the world’s largest crypto asset management business, with a mission to make cryptocurrency accessible to investors through traditional means.

How Grayscale wants to democratize crypto investing

Leadership

So I'm the CEO at Greyscale Investments, which is the world's largest crypto asset management business. Grayscale was founded in 2013 with the launch of our very first investment vehicle, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which is often known as ticker G BT C. Our mission at gray scale is really to help investors access crypto as an investment but do so through a traditional means of gaining exposure to really any investment and that's through a whole family of investment vehicles that we've now created the conversation around ESG as it relates to crypto, most often focuses on digital asset mining. Given that mining is not a direct part of the gray scale business. This hasn't been a unique focus of ours, but we are really encouraged that the industry we're a part of is taking ESG consideration very seriously. We know many of the digital asset miners and what we do see is them moving increasingly towards renewable energy sources and really trying to not only lower their carbon footprint as they do support different Blockchain protocols, but also working to actually take up excess capacity for energy that would otherwise be wasted. And so over time, we do think there's a real opportunity in the digital asset space for ESG to become a real focus for many businesses, particularly those that have larger carbon footprints. I think in order to run a purpose driven organization, it really comes down to communication. If your employees don't fundamentally understand where the company is going, then we're not a CEO setting them up for success. As I think about the way that an organization like Grayscale moves, we're moving at breakneck speed every single day. And so it would be easily possible for employees to lose track of where an organization we're going or what initiatives or priorities are most important to the company. And so for me, as a CEO with a company that's continuing to expand, it really does come down to communicating to employees with a high degree of frequency as to what the company's top priorities are, how folks should be spending their time and really as an organization ensuring that everybody is operating from fullsome information that really allows them to not only do their best work but actually see the fruits of their labor across the organization. When I think about measuring success at a company like gray scale, I really examine it through two different lenses. The first really is with our employees every year. We're conducting employee engagement surveys and some of the most frequently asked questions in those types of surveys surround whether or not employees feel that we as an organization are purpose led, whether employees know where the company is going in terms of prioritization and whether or not they feel that the work they're doing directly dovetails with the company's mission and the company's purpose. And when we're consistently receiving feedback, that employees feel very much aligned with where the company is going and they see their fingerprints of the work that they've done all over the company. It means that we as leaders are doing the right thing to communicate with employees. So they feel that direct connection. The other way that I think about success really revolves around how great sale as an organization shows up in the world. 10 years into our journey. I look back and I realize that we've not only led with purpose as an organization but that we've had to be bold and we've had to be pioneering all while respecting existing rules and regulations as an organization that is trying to bring crypto as an investment to the largest pool of investors that we possibly can. While also seeing that the regulatory landscape for crypto may have not caught up as quickly as crypto adoption has. It's been really important that we not only show up in the world in a way that democratizes information around this pioneering technology, but also can't forsake the fact that we're trying to do very innovative things while never overlooking existing rules and regulations

 Amy Challen, General Manager, Artificial Intelligence Sachin Dev Duggal, Founder and Chief Wizard, Builder.ai Jenny Griffiths, Vice President, Data Science, Oracle Moderator: May Habib

Brainstorm AI London 2024: Navigating Roadblocks And Catalysts To Enterprise-Wide Adoption

Photography by Joe Maher / Fortune Brainstorm AI

Conferences

Hey, hi again, everybody. Uh really excited to talk about getting those po CS out of purgatory and into scale uh with a fantastic panel. Uh First to kick us off how many folks have got scaled use cases in production for generative A I in the audience hands up. OK. Just what we thought. Um How many folks if you know, are spending more than a million dollars a year on generative A I? More than 3 million, more than 5 million, more than 10. OK. Well, you guys know what my answer is. Um but uh that's great. Uh uh insight and data folks are early and the, the stat, this is accenture BC G. Lots of folks who pulled executives fewer than 10% of the generative A I explorations are in production. Uh There is a graveyard of unused chat applications when those use cases do go to production. So I do think um we are in a um a bit of a trough from a adoption uh and scaling uh perspective and let us dive into um uh this conversation with, with that in mind. Um You all have scaled use cases in production and I would love for us to actually just maybe rapid fire, share those before getting into what you had to overcome to get to scales. And then we definitely want to take questions in, in this session. Uh Sachin, I'd love to start with you at Builder. What are you guys doing? How are you using A I internally? Um We are proud partners, mutual customers. So um tell us a little bit about how you guys are using A I internally. Sure. So, you know, at builder, we use the entire length and breadth. So, right, the way from, you know what you call classical A I machine learning, both supervised, unsupervised. Um We actually, the core foundations of our platform are built on a knowledge graph. So graph theory is really important because it creates the reasoning engine to give generative A I guard rails for all intents and purposes. Um but also um is a really strong method for reinforced learning. Um And um and then we use computer vision. Um So when we produce applications, you know, the old way of testing was you had a human that looked at an application compared to, to design. Uh It takes a really long time, we can test an application across thousands of devices in 30 seconds using computer vision. Um And then obviously, which everyone's looking forward to is we use a lot of generous technology. Um Now, I would say uh we have our own work especially on the small um sort of small language model side. Uh But the, the, the use of commoditized LLM SI use commoditized Lucy because I know it's a new technology but it's commoditized, it's actually quite important because we work with just about everyone um both from an image video and sort of the the tech side. And that allows us to do everything from user story generation based on ragging with the knowledge graph through to what we just launched last week, code generation. Um where the the our error rate is is single digit percentage um in in code produce because it plugs into the rest of our plumbing. So, really across the spectrum? Awesome. Thanks for sharing, Amy. What about you at Shell? What are we doing? Um We're doing a lot because we have the remit of the whole of Shell, which is a very large integrated value chain energy company. Um but some of our best established use cases and when I say best established, I mean, 10 years, it's things like predictive maintenance which you can use, you could use it in traditional oil and gas space, but also um wind farms, also the Holland Hydrogen one where we're, which we're building uh to be operational a year or two, which will create um green hydrogen from the Holland Coast, North Wind Farm that is being designed to have these integration as well. So that's a use case where we've got um So tens of thousands of pieces of equipment um under predicted maintenance models. Um Other examples are, are, are eb charging network. Um We've got optimized charging across that to ensure that um it will charge as efficiently as possible from where you're at. And then you've got other applications um such as um our marketing and loyalty pieces. Again, really obvious use case people have been doing it for years, but these have been a cut for years. So we've got a long tradition of making all the mistakes putting into production, scaling it. And that has put us in a much better place for the newer use cases and things like TV. I come out, everyone gets really excited. It's the same problem. It's, it's not the technology, which is the problem, it's the scaling, it's the implementation to processes, it's the change management. And so we have got that framework to do this. We have got these practices and we're doing the same again. So it's, it's been a really good couple of years in terms of the improvements in the models and improvements in the capabilities. But we are just putting it into our um, existing frameworks and existing ways of working in order to scale it and get the value. Awesome. We're gonna come back to that. That's great. And Jenny, what about you? You are both building A I into your products and using A I internally. So maybe tell us about both those sides of skilled use cases. Now, that's a really good point. We do have a kind of two pronged approach. Um So my group um I'm in Fusion A I and basically we develop embedded A I applications for Oracle Fusion Suite. Um and that covers pillars like uh human capital management, uh supply chain management, customer experience, uh finance. So loads of kind of different applications, but we try and use the same core underlying technology for loads of different customers and loads of different applications. So it makes us think about how you can design A I at scale. Um And yeah, when it comes to what we've been doing with generative A I, we have 25 use cases go live just last quarter alone, um A lot of others as well. So we're beginning to see this kind of customer adoption. And from my point of view, what's been really lovely to see is kind of people lean in at scale for kind of business knowledge and business application, but also on a more academic level of we now have customers really engaging with us about how A I models are put together what kind of data we're feeding systems with. So we're seeing this kind of business awareness and kind of academic awareness rise hand in hand, which has been really great to see awesome the end user adoption that you are seeing. Let's talk now, just your and your internal use cases for for generative A I, we have heard over a couple of panels around the reskilling challenge and the training challenge, training almost feels like an understatement or the kind of skill that you need uh in a workforce to be able to really use A I as leverage. Right? It's such a different type of technology. Can anybody speak to the types of things they did to really get scaled end user adoption inside of their companies? That would be good advice. So I think, um you know, I I'll sort of start off, we've looked at the implementation in two different lenses. One is where are you using this to remove human variants? And where are you using this to remove entire human workload and they're very different or, you know, tasks that someone was doing? Um And so where you're using it to remove variants, there is a, there's a co piloting or a companion experience, right? Because you're usually arming the human being. So for example, Natasha is ra I and we'll speak to customers, but at the same time, we'll speak to one of our customer success team and tell them when a customer this is, you actually need to answer with this. So there's a, there's a benefit collective insight, but that is very jarring for someone who's not used to having someone listening in their ear and then telling them what to ask. Um and, and so I think there is a, there is an upward training process in that and you need to get people comfortable with the fact that there's an on the call. Uh I think the removing work is a little bit easier because you're basically saying, hey, listen, uh as a good example, you used to manage your day. We have customer success team. They used to manage their day. You're not gonna manage your day anymore. Someone you're gonna have this assistant that's gonna move your calendar around and sort things out so that we can use the right time slots through the right things because they're all connected. Um There, it's more of an education to get people emotionally comfortable with the idea that, you know, they're sort of one step removed from how they were running a particular task. Very helpful. Yeah. And the way that we've been approaching it, at least to my team is that we've kind of segmented it into the different user base and depending on who it is, who will be consuming the technology. We apply different ways of educating the end customer. So for data scientists with my team, this time last year, we introduced, we called it LLM Friday, which was terribly branded from my point of view. Um But it was basically just my team, every Friday just took the time off tasks just to learn about LL MS because it's this huge new technology that's come in and we needed to be experts quickly. So we've gone to kind of that extreme around education, to the kind of day to day education around how our customers are actually engaging with this. So it could be hints and tips around prompt engineering. And we have a center of excellence to be formed to kind of lead people on that journey, help them engineer those prompts. But then, you know, we're leaving that knowledge with them as time goes on and then you've got the actual outreach to customers um doing events, videos and podcasts, basically, any data that we can feed people around how to get the most out of these systems. And that's what we're seeing is really important. Yeah, absolutely. Um I was in a conference recently about 50 A I CEO S and um there was a one of those like Slido, you know, respond to um the survey question and the number of um CEO S that had built uh A I features into their products versus the number of CEO S where there was meaningful PNL impact from using A I internally like 10 to 1, right? And so the, the onus for actual adoption is being pushed on to the customer's customer. Um And but by the A I vendors, um and I, I do think um the, the scale of change is really one of those blockers to, to wide enterprise uh adoption. So I love that you're doing that. Um I do think that um uh inside of even the A I companies, the um the the steepness of that learning curve, right is really being felt, it's only getting steeper back to you Amy at Shell. So you all have got a uh a deep hit history of integrating A I into your processes and getting a workforce comfortable um with relying on A I to make super critical like life and death types of decisions. Tell us a little bit about the framework that you're now adopting in the generative A I world to scale these use cases. What can you share with the audience? I mean, boring answer is not that different. It's like because again, it's like any change program, you just have to go through the steps and it will really depend on the individual use cases as the other panelists have mentioned about exactly, you know, what will be the blocker to change. So for an example, like with the particularly with safety use cases, you might call them parallel running is a really good one. So we have this technology called operator round by exception where you basically complement and operators around on an asset with um computer vision technology to sort of detecting what's going on. Now, you run it everything in parallel the old system, the new system for a long time and identify the variances before you take anything out. Um That can just once you've seen something working for how long you need days, weeks, months people start building trust they start realizing what's going on. They also, it's a big part of like how, you know, you've got the right model, right? This is the feedback loop. Um And I think that's, that's really the key for me. This is agile scaling where you always have a joint team. It's always a technical team, but also a business team. Never do data science without the business. You're always integrating the feed lap loop at every stage and you're always listening to what people are saying and understanding or if it's not being used, why it's your problem, it's not the user problem and then only scaling up and only taking to the next level when you're actually comfortable with that. And I think there's just no way out of that. It's never the case that you get something and it's perfect because it just doesn't work like that. So it thank you so much. OK. Questions. Um We've got time for a couple that is a fast hand. You in the middle. Yes, please uh tell everybody where you're from, who you are before you ask your question, Sam. Yes. Business school Barcelona. So we've talked a lot about employee training, user adoption and so on. What about the executives? How do we get the executives to a point that they can redesign organizational processes, structures and even business models? Oh, I love that question. There are so many execs who have to fill in airtime at board meetings. Right now and those 10 minutes last for a very long time. So, um, he would like to take executive training. So, you know, one of the things that we've said to our executive team and, and that we have a weekly war meeting, which is sort of weekly action review last week, next week. Uh, and I sort of put a man to everyone's like in every, every second meeting I wanna know a problem you wanna solve because I think less about education, less about process is actually first agreeing, what is the problem we're trying to solve? And is it really a problem that needs to be solved? And then, and then the question is how will you use the entire landscape of it? I not necessarily just generative. How will you use the landscape of how to solve that problem? Right. And where do you need it? That's just our experience. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I'd be inclined to agree actually, if an executive comes to me with a problem, I always try and get to where they're trying to be and what KP it is that they want to impact rather than how they think they want to get there. And that's not because they might, they might know the answer, but it's kind of good for the data scientists behind the scenes to verify the approach that you're taking and that's really come into fruition kind of this year with generative A I because a lot of people think they want generative A I's case. But actually it turns out they want a deterministic output. They want the same thing again and again and then it's up to me to go, well, in that case, you should be looking at plastic A I, and it's not worse or it's not better. It's about that kind of education around which technologies are appropriate or which, which stages and the only way you can get there is actually talk about where you want to get to right at the very end. Yeah, I love that. I think it's really easy for people to come to you and say they want Blockchain and JV, I in an app and you're like, I think you need to business process automation and it's not because people are stupid. It's because they're curious, which is great and then you can have a conversation and we've had no problem at all having interested executives in all of this and the curiosity is great, but ultimately, there's no substitute for expertise. So it's always a joint conversation with people who really know their business about what can be done and what's sensible, helpful. Thank you. Other questions. Yes, back there. Hi there, Mark Riley. Mark Riley from Matheson A I. Um my clients have got clear vision and road maps and plans, but the stumbling block is always identifying ro I getting it past the CFO. How do we, how do we make roi a meaningful prediction. Yeah, I love this question. I can take that too. Um So it is so imperative to get the CFO on the same page and I actually think not getting them on the same page as executives uh really can result in some twisted incentives like execs, not sharing the actual ro I because they don't want the budget taken away from them. And so especially in the early days, um where you want to be able to reinvest savings into more explorations and not disincentivize execs from really taking costs out of the business. Um The Roy conversation, you know, should not be politicized. Um We track Roy with our customers weekly, not everybody is doing that, but it certainly requires being able to partner with procurement and finance and have this be kind of board level um priority uh to make that happen. But it's absolutely essential. Uh I think a big part of why Po CS that seem to be successful at a small scale aren't scaling is the CFO doesn't actually know how much this is going to cost at scale. Everything is priced by tokens and you have no idea what it's gonna cost the organization to run this at scale. So including them is just incredibly important. Um making sure that Ry is part of um the actual POC because that builds the scaffolding for what you're gonna take to production from people to process. Is it so important. Yeah, and, and look, and I, I just said whenever we've done an implementation and we, we do this entire thesis beforehand, which is we think it's gonna cut cost by this. Here is the cohort of things we need to test it across, here's the period we need it for. Um And depending on how close we get to the result that becomes the gatekeeper for whether we move to production or not, you know, if, if the cost to have that ro I obviously exceeds the RO I, then it's not worth doing. Um And I think that's, that's built in a really good discipline to test very early. Uh versus where we've seen in the past is it's tested too late. Uh And at this point, it's like, well, has it not shipped? Versus you might actually make the call and we've done this a few times. It's just not worth shipping. Or the approach we've taken is not the right approach because the more you generate, the more cost you have, but you could use classical A I or knowledge graphs, for example, to reuse something you previously generated and then actually makes it much more economical. Wonderful. Thank you folks so much. Thanks to the audience. Well, that's it.

Emily Chiu, Co-founder and COO, TBD, Block, Inc. Dimitrios Dosis, President, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Mastercard  Moderator: Jeff John Roberts, FORTUNE  

Fortune Global Forum 2023: Cross Border Payments And The Path To Financial Inclusion 

Welcome to the stage, Fortune executive editor, Asia Clay Chandler. Hello everyone and welcome back. Um For those of you that are watching out in the in the foyer in the lounge, please come back in and join us. Uh We look forward to getting our uh great program for the afternoon uh underway. There's little doubt that digital technology is reshaping the future of finance by leveraging innovation to create a more inclusive and sustainable financial future. According to the World Bank, two thirds of adults worldwide now make or receive digital payments. Technology is empowering individuals. It's broadening access to financial services and it's driving efficiency and competition in the financial sector, but there are still some clear obstacles to overcome. Please welcome Fortune crypto editor Jeff John Roberts to discuss these obstacles and potential solutions. Joining him will be two leaders in this space. Emily Cho is chief operating officer of TBD at block and demetrios. Dois is president of Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at mastercard. Please welcome them to the Fortune Global Forum. Jeff. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining. Uh I'm Jeff Roberts. Um I'd just like to open with a quick couple of questions. Um Who here uses mobile banking. How about Google Pay or Apple pay? How about Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or anything else? Not so much, but everyone uses the first two. And the reason I'm asking this are payments have changed a lot in recent years and have made it a lot easier. We benefit from it. More time, more connection. There's a lot of people who don't have access to this. And for me, access to finance and payments is sort of like access to infrastructure, like roads, like education, like health care. It's something that can really help people, but there's a lot of people of populations who don't have access to it at all. And I think that really limits what they can do and where they can go. So that's what we're going to be exploring here today. How to get these technologies into the hands of more people. Emily, I'd like to open with you. You are part of the division called TBD, which is part of block, which used to be called Square. I think you probably all know it, this little pa rail thing, you know, a farmers market might have it to pay a company run by Jack Dorsey. But Emily, tell me what is TBD and how are you expanding finance to people? Sure. So TBD is the newest of four businesses at block, formerly known as Square and we founded the business in 2021 in response to one of the most pressing global financial challenges that we saw at the time. And this is when the World Bank had just come out with a report, citing that 1.7 billion adults in the world lacked access to a basic bank account. And yet two thirds of them actually have access to a mobile phone and internet connectivity. And so the problem that we saw was that while the internet had given us amazing infrastructure to connect everyone to information. Um Clearly the world of money and payments hadn't kept up. And this is the problem that TBD is looking to solve. The internet is missing an identity layer and it's missing a native value layer. Um And through the power of decentralized technologies, we believe we can make sending money as easy as sending um an email in the world. Um And uh this is actually something that we think is really exciting through the protocols that we're building where we can allow any individual and institution to send money and value cross board in a way that's much more inclusive and affordable. Give us an example of this in action, you make it a little less abstract. Who are you helping? Yeah. So there's a lot of different people and small businesses that were already helping take like a person who's trying to send money across borders for your average like remittances, use case sending money to a country such as Nigeria is incredibly fraught, you know, many times like you don't have a US dollar banking account to even receive these funds. It's expensive. It can cost upwards of 20% using a traditional remittances provider. Um And often times, you know, we actually ran an experiment, you went to four different branches only for them to tell you like return to sender, right? Um And through the power of uh digital currencies and for us, it's Bitcoin and stablecoin that we're really um really focused on investing in. You could send it at a fraction of a cost. It goes through, we actually sent a transaction in 40 seconds and through our protocol, we're bridging the world of digital currencies and legacy finance. And so not only did we use the digital currency as a bridge, but it landed in someone's mpesa account, it landed in someone's bank account, it meets people where they are today and this is primarily in Africa, right? Today. We are in Africa. We are also looking to expand into Latam. The Global South is a big focus for us, Tame. I want to bring you in here, mastercard. I'm sure we all know a very famous brand, you know, in the U. Anyways, it's my credit card, but I think a lot of people are not aware, Mastercard is a lot more than that. So how is Mastercard promoting financial inclusion? I assume you're not running around giving credit cards to people in the Global South I mean you are but like what's you know, what else are you doing? Sure. Thanks Jeff and thank you also for having a Mastercard. That's great. That is your credit card. So Mastercard is all about connecting people. It's about connectivity. So for connectivity, you first need to have a digital identity without an identity. There's no connectivity in the last World Bank report, we saw that over 850 million people in the globe are still without an identity. That's not good. So we need to fix identity. That's number one on top of identity. As you said, we need connectivity rails which I think we started little by little building up. We have car rails, we have ach rails, we have um your radar that you're building up. So this is connecting people. But I think for this to be successful, there needs to be value, there needs to be value for the end consumer. There needs to be value for the for the sme behind it. Let me give you an example. In Ethiopia, we started a program which is the farmers, the farmers connects the farmers, the rural farmers to a marketplace so they can have a much better price point for their product. So they don't need to go through intermediaries. So you have a direct connection to a marketplace through those rails and you add value. That's why people are connecting to them. I think this is very important rails without uh, value are not worth it. Yeah, that makes no sense. Let's step back one sex though. I mean, suppose we have a farmer, you know, who has money, they might keep it under their bed and, you know, unfortunately, you know, inflation might destroy its value. It's prone to be stolen and so on. But they probably do have a phone. Right. Almost everyone's got a mobile phone. Right. So, how do we kind of get it to the point where they can have, you know, something on their phone that will work and solving that identity thing too. You know, because the bank needs to know who they are. So Emily, just take us through the process of someone who's, you know, in a very kind of low technology, low income place. Do you get that first step? That seems like a pretty big hurdle. Yeah. So we're all familiar with physical credentials in the world, right. So, if you have a driver's license, it's a physical credential that gives an attestation of your ability to drive or operate a motor vehicle. If you have a university diploma, it's an attestation of you having graduated from a university. Unfortunately, we don't have a great layer of identity on the internet and scanning that physical driver's license or faxing that physical diploma is not really a great tamper proof or privacy preserving way, right? And a farmer is probably not going to have a driver's license or a diploma Exactly. And the fact that so many people are missing the basic credentials is a huge deterrent to actually being banked in the very first place. Right. And so through a lot of new standards being set by the W THREE C, which is open standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium, there's actually really great ways to now represent your physical credentials in a digital realm in a way that's scalable in a way that can reach the farmer in a way where he can independently represent who he is in a way that is independently verifiable privacy, preserving tamper proof and allows him to actually access the global economy. So that's something we're really excited about is bridging trust, identity and financial access and bringing all these things together demetrios. How does mastercard solve this problem in terms of, you know, this person can't, they might not have an ID. How do you get them to use the financial, you know, if they can't prove who they are? So here's the reality, many people already have a mobile phone and this is a great starting point because mobile operators are actually able to at least identify you. OK. So there is, if you want a basic identification already, the question then becomes is how do you first add value to those mobile rails? Uh Remittances is one of them which I think is a great use case because similar to you, I believe they cost too much they're too slow and they're kind of archaic with the time they take to solve. And, but then the problem also becomes, how do you make those closed loop wallets effectively interoperable? If you go to Africa, you, you mentioned mes a, uh MP ESA uses one wallet, but then there is another wallet from another mobile operator. How do you make them into operating? But I think this is going to be super critical if we want to make sure that the Pharma and the people who are using those wallets can, can operate in the proper way. That's interesting. So using the sort of the mobile carriers recruiting them to be part of it. And I think standards to a common standard, where does governments fit into this too? Because my, you know, covering crypto, one thing I've learned, governments are very good at identifying you, you know, they know that's what they're best at. They're terrible at technology. So how can governments do a better job to, you know, facilitate this or who is, you know, what's happening on that front? Well, one of the things we're really excited about is actually partnering with different authoritative sources of credentials. So that could be your DMV, um to issue verifiable credentials where your driver's license is actually represented as an identity credential that can unlock banking access um or different forms of, you know, your passport can actually be represented as a verifiable credential also to unlock financial accesses or services. Um And that's something that we're really excited into bringing into the digital realm for us. Governments are true partners and one of the things which for partners like our governments are very important is safety and security. What Master Card does is we're using A I. People only talk about A I with J GP T but you know what A I drives also a huge benefit. For example, the last two years, our A I solutions have have covered over 30 billion in fraud globally. This is a huge number that would have gone through. So with the government, we work together to make sure that we make safe and security in our all in payments across all our race. I think that's number one and the other one is obviously also making sure that when people identify themselves, that they are who they are and we also have um cipher tools to make sure that when a transaction goes through through, for example, through a crypto wallet that let's say the end side of this are not dodgy and they are the ones who they say they are. I think those tools A I and making sure that the crypto transaction is being passed through the right methods is, is, is, is what we're trying to help governors with. Basically listen, let's go back to remittances for a sec because I've covered Cryptocurrency and payments for a decade. And that's something that means. So hard. It still seems like Western Union. No offense to Western Union. But this notion of showing up with some cash at a store and then waiting three days and some goes to another store and they get it, you know, I think the margins like five or 6% maybe it's getting better. But it's why is that so hard to solve, you know, if you want to, you know, I've heard some people say, maybe start with the B to B that will figure it out and then trickle down. But where are we? I'm going to stick with you, Demetrius, you know, where are we on that? You know, how is, is the technology improving? What is missing to make that happen? So let me give you a real time example. I'm I live in Dubai and I came from Germany. So seven days ago, I wired the money from my bank account here to my bank account in Germany using traditional methods. And both of them were, let's say seasoned banks. It took five days for the money to arrive between, I didn't know where the money was. So I effectively called both banks and nobody could tell me where it is. The only thing that told me is I need to have uh an investigation run uh to understand and it would take me two days to understand where the money is. Luckily it arrives. So it's archaic, the system of remittances with um correspondent banking is archaic. That's, that's the problem because the rates are just not interconnected. You need to have, as you correctly said, correspondent banks in the other part of the world that is holding the funds. I don't think this is the way to go. I think the way to go is to use other rates to use. For example, your ra to use the card races to use interconnected. Ach R I think this is the only way because the race exist. You do not need to rely on your correspondent banking. You can go down to the other ras and really try to make sure people understand the value which is safety and security, which is speed and also cheaper. Yeah, I mean, Jeff like the the term global payments is a lie when it comes to the legacy financial system, these are systems that were built largely in the seventies, they're inherently domestic and you know, it's a ledger system that allows you to think that your money is actually moving across borders. This is the real, real innovation when it comes to digital currencies and Blockchain. Bitcoin is actually an internet native currency. It's 24 7, it spans borders. Um It's really the first global payment system and I think those who are focused on the speculative aspects of it. Miss that, that is the true innovation of this technology. Yeah, I entirely agree with you. I cover crypto, it has a dodgy reputation in some ways, but I honestly believe the technology is superior because swift messaging system, you know, ac great in the seventies. But, you know, just like, you know, airports built in the seventies are badly out of date. This stuff is too. But you know, how do we persuade companies, consumers and governments to use Blockchain? You know, especially through a more conservative company like mastercard, you know, do you guys touch Blockchain at all? Yes, absolutely. We do. And for us, it's about giving the consumer choice. We want to give the consumer choice to use Blockchain. We want to give the consumer choice to use the car ras to use. Ach, that's all it is about. We are invested in Blockchain. We believe it's a future proof technology. It needs to come with the right guard rail, the guard rates in terms of safety and security, but also in terms of data protection for us, data is in the center of whatever we do. We need to make sure that if it's about you, the consumer, you own your data, you control your data, you should actually benefit from the data. And that's why you might be using some of the rails that we talked about and we need to keep it secure, you own, you control, you should benefit and we keep it secure. I wish we had more time. We only have less than a minute. But I want to ask you both really quickly what friend or product? Are you most excited that we're going to start seeing, arriving in the next year or two that you think is the most interesting thing to watch Emily. So for us, we're pioneering work around verifiable credentials and in particular, bringing verifiable credentials that can prove KYC and AM L. And when you talk about what it's going to take to bring institutions into the fold, actually establishing a layer of trust and compliance is what I think is going to unleash like activity and liquidity like we haven't seen to date and that's something we're really excited about. Makes sense and Demetris very quickly. I think we'll see much more biometrics. I think biometrics is what will make the consumer experience easy. I'd like to call it Pay with a smile. That's what we introduced now and I think this will be the future. Yeah, I can't wait to have this talk in five years. I think we're going to be a very different place. So please give a hand for the panelists. Thank you very much.

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