How Cash App Uses Creators to Grow (and What Fintech Startups Can Copy)

What’s Cash App’s creator playbook, in one paragraph?

Be part of the culture people already love, give them a reason to open the app today, and let thousands of voices (artists, athletes and everyday users) carry the name further than ads ever could.

The numbers from its early run are striking. Per Trapital’s analysis, Cash App’s monthly active users grew from about 7 million in 2017 to 15 million in 2018 and 24 million in 2019. Over 200 hip-hop artists had name-dropped Cash App in songs. Square ran creator campaigns of roughly $100,000 with artists like Travis Scott and Lil B in 2018, and spent an estimated $60,000 on #CashAppFriday giveaways in 2019. That’s not a huge budget for what it bought.

The pattern is the point: every one of those moves made Cash App the way to participate, not just the brand on the banner.

Copying that pattern starts with knowing which culture your customers live in and which creators carry it. That’s the matching work INFLUENCE does before a campaign starts: finding creators whose audiences are already part of the scene you want to show up in, then building them into one campaign you approve.

Why did culture beat features for Cash App?

Because sending money is a commodity, but belonging isn’t. Every payment app can split a bill. Only one became the app people heard about in songs, saw at concerts and used to get into giveaways.

Some lessons inside that:

• Pick a culture and commit. Cash App didn’t try to be everything to everyone in its creator work. Hip-hop was the center, and its user base grew strongest in the South and Midwest, per Trapital.

• Earned beats bought. Paid partnerships opened the door; organic mentions in songs kept the name everywhere for free.

• Consistency compounds. A giveaway every Friday builds a ritual. A one-off campaign builds a spike.

• Respect the culture. Brands that treat a community like a demographic get called out fast.

Committing to one culture means working with lots of creators inside it, season after season, without losing the thread. INFLUENCE handles that continuity, from recurring creator deals to briefs that keep each video native to the scene, so your brand shows up consistently without your team running a dozen relationships by hand.

How do product-native moments turn viewers into users?

By making the app the only way to take part. If a creator’s post says “check out this app,” it’s an ad. If it says “the only way to get tickets is through this app,” it’s a reason.

Look at how Cash App built that in:

• #CashAppFriday: users replied with their $cashtag for a chance to win, so you needed an account to play (Trapital).

• The Drake presale: Cash App worked with hundreds of creators, including about 100 athletes, to promote presale tickets available only through Cash App (Influencer Marketing Hub).

• A$AP Rocky’s Surprise Payoffs: on June 6, 2025, randomly selected Cash App Afterpay users had up to $200 of their balance paid off, $1 million in total, with “no forms” required (Cash App press).

Notice the last one: no entry form at all. The reward happened inside the app, which also made it harder for scammers to fake.

Turning a creator post into a product-native moment takes planning: an offer or feature only your app has, a brief that puts it at the center, and creators who post at the same time so it feels like an event. INFLUENCE coordinates that timing and briefing across the whole campaign, so 30 posts land like one moment instead of 30 random ads.

What can a fintech startup actually copy without Drake’s budget?

The structure, not the celebrities. You can’t book Drake, but you can pick a culture, create an app-only moment and spread it across many smaller creators who already belong there.

A startup-sized version of the playbook:

1. Pick one scene your customers care about: college sports, a music genre, a gaming community, a city.

2. Find 20–30 creators who are genuinely part of it, mostly micro and mid-tier.

3. Design one app-only moment: early access, a members-only drop, a split-the-bill challenge.

4. Launch together so it feels like something’s happening.

5. Repeat on a rhythm. Monthly beats once.

If you want the tier math behind “mostly micro,” we break it down in micro vs macro finfluencers.

That five-step version still means 25 contracts, 25 briefs and 25 payouts every season. With INFLUENCE you set one budget and one max CPM, approve the creators and the content, and pay only for delivered views, with no fees on top. The season runs on our side, not in your inbox.

What shouldn’t startups copy?

The parts that age badly in 2026: giveaways that invite scams, content aimed at teens, and anything your platform no longer allows.

Be careful with:

• Reply-to-win giveaways. They’re great for engagement and a magnet for fake “Cash App giveaway” accounts. Payment apps should keep rewards inside the app, as the A$AP Rocky payoffs did.

• Young audiences. A creator’s TikTok caption for the Drake presale noted the debit card was “available for anyone 13+.” Today, TikTok’s U.S. branded content rules (last published October 2025) restrict financial products like debit cards to users 18 and older, and only with TikTok’s permission.

• Sweepstakes rules. Giveaways in the U.S. come with their own legal requirements (official rules, no purchase necessary, state-specific rules), so get counsel involved.

• Disclosure. Paid is paid, even if the creator would’ve mentioned you anyway.

We cover the payment-app version of these rules in influencer marketing for payment apps.

Keeping a culture campaign fun and compliant is mostly about catching problems before they post. INFLUENCE puts your required rules into every brief and routes every draft to your team for approval, and we plan around platform age limits from the start, so the campaign doesn’t lean on an audience it isn’t allowed to reach.

How does INFLUENCE compare with other ways to run this playbook?

Honestly? Each option has a place. Here’s how INFLUENCE stacks up against the usual ways fintech teams try to run a culture-led creator program.

Where we’re better: you get the cultural reach of many real creators without staffing a creator team, and you pay for delivered attention instead of a single big bet. Where we’re not the answer: if you need one specific superstar, that’s a celebrity deal, and you should do it.

That’s the honest pitch for INFLUENCE: one system that finds, briefs, reviews, pays and measures the creators, while you keep the decisions that matter. For the bigger picture, start with influencer marketing for fintech companies, or see how pay-per-view pricing works.