Square Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Sarah Davis, Digital Finance & Fintech | Last updated: September 3, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Square processed $72.848 billion in gross payment volume in the second quarter of 2026, up 13% year over year, and generated $1.160 billion in segment gross profit. Behind those headline numbers, Axis Intelligence Research finds Square’s yield per dollar processed slipped slightly while its closest vertical competitor gained nearly seven basis points.
Quick Answer
Square, the seller business of Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ), processed $72.848 billion in gross payment volume (GPV) in Q2 2026, up 13% year over year, producing $1.160 billion in gross profit. Across full-year 2025, more than 4.5 million sellers ran 5.9 billion transactions worth $250 billion. According to Axis Intelligence Research, Square converted 164.3 basis points of every dollar processed into gross profit in Q2 2026, against 96.4 basis points for Toast.
Key Findings
- Square GPV reached $72.848 billion in the second quarter of 2026, growing 13% year over year on both a reported and constant-currency basis, per Block’s Q2 2026 shareholder letter.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, Square’s Merchant Platform Yield (MPY™) was 164.3 basis points in Q2 2026, down from 165.1 basis points a year earlier.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, the MPY™ gap between Square and Toast narrowed by 7.6 basis points in twelve months, from 75.5 to 67.9 basis points.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, the average Square sale fell to $42.37 in 2025 from $52.40 in 2023, a decline of 19.1% across two years.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, Square hardware subtracted $196 million from Square gross profit across the five quarters through June 2026.
How Much Payment Volume Does Square Process in 2026?
Square GPV was $72,848 million in the second quarter of 2026. Block defines Square GPV as the total dollar amount of all card and bank payments processed by sellers using Square, net of refunds. First-half 2026 volume reached $134,057 million against $118,350 million a year earlier, growth of 13.3%.
The composition matters more than the headline. U.S. GPV grew 9.8% and represented 78% of the total; international GPV grew 28% on a reported basis and 25% in constant currency, at 22% of the total. Applying those disclosed shares, Axis Intelligence Research calculates international volume of roughly $16.0 billion and U.S. volume of roughly $56.8 billion in the quarter.
Square GPV by period
| Period | Square GPV | YoY growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 2026 | $72,848M | 13% | Block Q2 2026 shareholder letter |
| Q1 2026 | $61,209M | 13% | Block Q2 2026 shareholder letter |
| Q4 2025 | $64,960M | 10% | Block Q2 2026 shareholder letter |
| Q3 2025 | $67,151M | 12% | Block Q2 2026 shareholder letter |
| Q2 2025 | $64,248M | 10% | Block Q2 2026 shareholder letter |
| Q1 2025 | $54,102M | — | Axis calculation from reported H1 2025 total |
| FY 2025 | $250,000M | — | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| FY 2024 | $228,000M | — | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| FY 2023 | $209,600M | — | Block FY2023 Form 10-K |
Block does not publish a standalone Q1 2025 Square GPV figure in the current letter. It publishes the half-year total of $118,350 million and the Q2 figure of $64,248 million, so the first quarter resolves to $54,102 million by subtraction. That row is flagged as Axis-calculated in the dataset.
Growth by seller vertical, as disclosed for Q2 2026: food and beverage GPV up 20%, retail up 13%, services up 7%. Block also reported that its mid-market segment, defined in the FY2025 Form 10-K as sellers generating more than $500,000 in annualized Square GPV, grew faster than any other seller cohort in the quarter.
Sarah Davis, Digital Finance & Fintech: The interesting line in the volume disclosure is not the 13%. It is that U.S. growth and international growth are drifting apart at a rate of nearly twenty points a year, and the smaller number is attached to 78% of the base. A platform whose fastest-growing geography is 22% of volume has a mix problem it can outrun for a while, and then cannot. The food and beverage acceleration is the offset, and it is the segment where Toast competes hardest.
How Many Sellers Use Square, and What Is Each One Worth?
In fiscal 2025, more than 4.5 million sellers used the Square ecosystem to run 5.9 billion individual sales transactions totaling $250 billion in GPV, originating from more than 800 million payment cards across more than 300 million buyer profiles. Square operates in eight countries: the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, and Spain.
Because Block reports the seller count as a floor rather than an exact figure, per-seller economics resolve as ceilings rather than averages. Axis Intelligence Research calculates that FY2025 Square gross profit of $3,936 million across at least 4.5 million sellers works out to no more than $875 of gross profit per seller per year, and volume of no more than $55,556 per seller per year. Both numbers fall as the true seller count rises above the disclosed floor.
Square scale metrics, FY2025
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Sellers | More than 4.5 million | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Sales transactions | 5.9 billion | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Square GPV | $250 billion | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Payment cards used | More than 800 million | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Buyer profiles | More than 300 million | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Countries served | 8 | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Distinct products | More than 30 | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Managed partners | More than 1,000 | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Field sales representatives | Approximately 150 | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Transactions risk-assessed automatically | More than 99.95% | Block FY2025 Form 10-K |
| Square segment gross profit | $3,936M | Axis calculation from four reported quarters |
| Square segment revenue | $8,452M | Axis calculation from four reported quarters |
That last pair is worth stating plainly, because it is the number most often reported wrong. Block reports Square revenue and gross profit quarterly and does not restate a Square full-year line in the letter; the annual figures above are the sum of four disclosed quarters, and each input quarter has its own row in the dataset.
What Is Square’s Take Rate? Introducing MPY™
Take rate is the most requested and least standardized number in payments. Some publishers divide total company revenue by volume, which mixes bitcoin trading revenue into a payments ratio. Others use gross profit including hardware, which penalizes any platform that sells devices near or below cost. Axis Intelligence Research built a metric that resolves both problems.
MPY™ (Merchant Platform Yield) is the gross profit a merchant commerce platform generates per dollar of payment volume it processes, expressed in basis points, with hardware excluded on both sides.
Formula:
MPY™ = (Platform gross profit excluding hardware and professional services ÷ Platform gross payment volume) × 10,000
Inputs, Q2 2026 (all from each company’s own reporting):
| Input | Square | Toast |
|---|---|---|
| Gross profit excluding hardware | $1,197M | $585M |
| Gross payment volume | $72,848M | $60,700M |
| MPY™ | 164.3 bps | 96.4 bps |
Worked example for Square: $1,197M ÷ $72,848M = 0.016432, multiplied by 10,000 = 164.3 basis points.
Worked example for Toast: subscription services gross profit of $226M plus financial technology solutions gross profit of $359M equals $585M; $585M ÷ $60,700M = 0.009637, multiplied by 10,000 = 96.4 basis points.
Why the construction holds. Block separately discloses two Square monetization rates for Q2 2026: commerce enablement excluding hardware at 1.23% and financial solutions at 0.41%. Summed, those equal 164 basis points. MPY™ reproduces Block’s own disclosed rates to within a rounding difference, computed independently from the gross profit and volume lines. That reconciliation is the reason the same formula can be pointed at a competitor and trusted: it is not an invented ratio, it is the ratio Block already publishes, rebuilt from primary inputs so it can be applied to platforms that do not publish it.
MPY™ readings, as of September 3, 2026
| Platform | Q2 2025 | Q2 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square | 165.1 bps | 164.3 bps | −0.8 bps |
| Toast | 89.6 bps | 96.4 bps | +6.8 bps |
| Gap | 75.5 bps | 67.9 bps | −7.6 bps |
Square still earns roughly 1.7 times what Toast earns on every dollar that crosses its rails. But the direction of travel is one-way. Toast added 6.8 basis points of yield in twelve months while Square gave back 0.8, compressing the gap by 7.6 basis points.
What MPY™ does not capture, and what we will not publish. MPY™ is a yield ratio, not a profitability measure; it sits above operating expense and says nothing about what each platform spends to acquire the volume. It is also mix-sensitive: a quarter in which lending scales faster than payments will lift MPY™ without any pricing change. Two annual observations of a mix-sensitive ratio are not a trend line, so Axis Intelligence Research declines to publish a convergence date for the Square-Toast gap. That row exists in the dataset, marked retracted, with the reasoning attached.
Square vs Toast: which platform earns more per dollar processed? Square, by 67.9 basis points as of Q2 2026. Toast is closing that gap; Square is not widening it.
Why Are Shopify and Clover Not in the MPY™ Table?
Two obvious comparators are absent, and the reasons are worth stating rather than hiding.
Shopify reported $115.6 billion in gross merchandise volume in Q2 2026. Its own Form 10-Q defines GMV as the total dollar value of orders facilitated through the platform, inclusive of shipping, duty, and value-added taxes. That is not the same object as payment volume processed. Dividing gross profit by GMV would produce a number that looks like a take rate and means something else. Axis Intelligence Research publishes the two figures side by side instead of merging them.
Clover, Fiserv’s small-business platform, reports gross payment volume and Clover revenue, but Fiserv’s Q2 2026 earnings release discloses Merchant Solutions segment revenue and adjusted operating margin without a Clover-level gross profit line. The numerator MPY™ requires does not exist in the filings. Estimating it from segment margin would be arithmetic dressed as disclosure.
Sarah Davis: Every comparison table in this category quietly averages incompatible denominators, and the resulting take rates get quoted for years. GMV is what shoppers spent. GPV is what the platform moved. A platform can grow one while shrinking its share of the other, which is precisely what happens when payments penetration and merchandise volume diverge. The disciplined answer is two columns, not one blended number.
Why Is Square’s Average Transaction Size Falling?
Block discloses both GPV and transaction count each year, which makes the average sale computable directly from the filings. Axis Intelligence Research maintains the series.
| Year | Square GPV | Sales transactions | Average sale | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | $209.6B | 4.0B | $52.40 | Block FY2023 Form 10-K, Axis calculation |
| 2024 | $228B | 5.2B | $43.85 | Block FY2025 Form 10-K, Axis calculation |
| 2025 | $250B | 5.9B | $42.37 | Block FY2025 Form 10-K, Axis calculation |
The average Square sale fell 19.1% between 2023 and 2025. Transaction count grew 47.5% over the same span while volume grew 19.3%, so Square is processing far more, far smaller payments than it was two years ago.
One methodological caveat belongs on this series. Block’s 2023 definition of Square GPV covered card payments plus ACH transfers; the current definition covers card and bank payments. The two definitions are close but not identical, and part of the 2023-to-2024 step reflects Block’s own reporting change alongside the underlying shift. The 2024-to-2025 comparison, on a consistent definition, still shows a 3.4% decline in the average sale.
This is the mechanical driver behind the commerce enablement monetization rate falling from 1.27% to 1.23% year over year. Interchange and processing economics are partly fixed per transaction, so a shrinking ticket compresses yield even when pricing is untouched. It also explains why Square’s financial solutions rate moved the other way, from 0.38% to 0.41%: lending revenue scales with seller volume rather than with ticket size.
How Much Does Square Make from Lending?
Square Loans has facilitated more than 4.0 million loans and advances representing more than $32.8 billion in principal since its May 2014 public launch. Loans are sized below 20% of a seller’s expected annual Square GPV and repay automatically as a fixed share of card sales. Block states that its loan cohorts have held loss rates under 4% through every cycle it has observed.
The structural change in 2026 is where those loans sit. Block’s consolidated loans held for investment, net, stood at $3,749 million at June 30, 2026 against $1,040 million a year earlier, and total lending products reached $6,928 million. Block deployed $1,834 million of capital to grow lending products over the trailing twelve months. Square Financial Services, the Utah-chartered industrial bank Block wholly owns, recently added high-yield savings accounts for eligible sellers and processed its first Square acquiring transaction in June 2026.
Square Credit Card crossed $1 billion in annualized spend during Q2 2026. Neighborhoods, Square’s discovery and loyalty layer connecting sellers to Cash App consumers, reached sellers representing $1 billion in annualized GPV as of June, up more than 220% from March.
Sarah Davis: A processor that keeps loans on its own balance sheet is a different business from one that originates and sells forward-flow, and Block has been moving from the second toward the first for four quarters. That is what the jump from $1.0 billion to $3.7 billion in loans held for investment says. It buys yield, which shows up in the financial solutions monetization rate climbing three basis points. It also converts a fee business into a credit business, and credit businesses are priced on their worst cohort, not their average one.
Is Square Still Block’s Main Business?
No, and it has not been for some time. Axis Intelligence Research calculates that Square accounted for 36.6% of Block’s consolidated gross profit in Q2 2026, down from 40.5% in Q2 2025. Cash App produced $1,973 million of gross profit against Square’s $1,160 million in the same quarter, growing 31% against Square’s 13%.
| Metric | Q2 2025 | Q2 2026 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block gross profit | $2,537M | $3,166M | Block Q2 2026 shareholder letter |
| Square gross profit | $1,027M | $1,160M | Block Q2 2026 shareholder letter |
| Cash App gross profit | $1,501M | $1,973M | Block Q2 2026 shareholder letter |
| Square share of Block gross profit | 40.5% | 36.6% | Axis calculation |
Block guided full-year 2026 gross profit to $12.51 billion, up 21%, on August 5, 2026. Full-year 2025 gross profit was $10.4 billion.
The hardware line nobody adds up
Block discloses hardware’s contribution to Square gross profit every quarter, and it is negative every quarter. Axis Intelligence Research sums the five reported quarters through June 2026: hardware subtracted $196 million from Square gross profit over that span, at $34M, $41M, $43M, $41M, and $37M respectively.
Toast runs the same play. Its hardware and professional services gross profit was negative $68 million in Q2 2026 alone. In both cases the device is a customer acquisition instrument priced accordingly, which is exactly why MPY™ excludes it on both sides.
What Happened to Block’s Headcount, and Did Square Slow Down?
Block reported 10,205 full-time employees at December 31, 2025, of whom 2,472 sat outside the United States. In February 2026 it announced a workforce plan expected to reduce headcount by more than 40%, substantially complete by the end of Q2 2026.
Square GPV growth accelerated to 13% in the quarter that plan concluded, with U.S. growth reaching its strongest rate since Q2 2023. Block reported adjusted operating income margin of 27%, an all-time high, and adjusted diluted EPS of $1.02, up 65%.
For scale on the starting point: FY2025 gross profit of $10.4 billion across 10,205 employees works out to roughly $1.02 million of gross profit per employee before the reduction. Any 2026 figure will be a different business, and the first full post-reduction year closes in December.
Sarah Davis: One quarter of accelerating volume after a headcount reduction proves that volume did not fall in one quarter. It does not settle the question, because payments volume is the slowest-moving thing on the income statement. Volume runs on seller relationships and integrations built over years; the effects of thinner support, slower underwriting review, or delayed product work land in churn and dispute rates, and those are trailing indicators. The data point to watch is not next quarter’s GPV. It is whether the mid-market cohort, which needs account management, keeps outgrowing the self-serve base into 2027.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure in this report was retrieved from a primary document on September 3, 2026. Primary sources: Block’s Q2 2026 shareholder letter, Block’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2023 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Toast’s Q2 2026 results filed as Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, Shopify’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and Fiserv’s Q2 2026 earnings release filed as Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1. No figure in this report derives from a secondary compilation, a market-research estimate, or an aggregator.
MPY™ formula. MPY™ = (platform gross profit excluding hardware and professional services ÷ platform gross payment volume) × 10,000, computed for the same fiscal quarter, using each platform’s own reported figures. Square’s numerator is Block’s disclosed Square gross profit excluding hardware. Toast’s numerator is the sum of its GAAP subscription services gross profit and GAAP financial technology solutions gross profit, which together exclude the hardware and professional services line. Denominators are each platform’s disclosed GPV, both defined as payments processed on the platform net of refunds. The formula is reproducible from the inputs table above.
Axis-calculated rows. Thirty rows in the dataset are Axis calculations rather than direct observations. Each carries its formula in the method_note column. Per-seller figures are ceilings, not averages, because Block discloses seller counts as floors.
Refusals. Two rows are marked retracted. The first is a convergence date for the Square-Toast MPY™ gap, which two annual observations of a mix-sensitive ratio cannot support. The second is a Clover MPY™ reading, which Fiserv’s disclosure does not permit. Both rows state the reasoning in the dataset rather than omitting the question.
Definitional notes. Square GPV excludes Cash App Business GPV, which Block reports separately; total Block GPV was $74,734 million in Q2 2026. Block’s 2023 Square GPV definition included ACH transfers and the current definition covers card and bank payments, which affects the average-sale series across that boundary. Gross profit figures are GAAP segment gross profit unless labeled otherwise.
About This Dataset
Contents. 121 rows covering Square gross payment volume, gross profit, monetization rates, seller and transaction counts, lending balances, hardware contribution, MPY™ readings, and comparator figures for Toast, Shopify, and Clover. Coverage spans fiscal 2023 through Q2 2026, global with United States and international splits where disclosed.
Provenance. Every row carries source organization, source document, source URL, retrieval date, a primary-source flag, an Axis-calculated flag, and a method note where the value is computed.
Updates. Relevance-driven. This dataset is revised when Block reports quarterly results, when Toast reports quarterly results, or when Block’s annual Form 10-K restates a seller, transaction, or volume figure.
License. CC BY 4.0. Free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution.
File. square-statistics-2026.csv
Cite This Research
APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). Square statistics 2026: GPV, sellers, take rate, and the yield gap closing behind it. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/square-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “Square Statistics 2026: GPV, Sellers, Take Rate, and the Yield Gap Closing Behind It.” Axis Intelligence, 3 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/square-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “Square Statistics 2026: GPV, Sellers, Take Rate, and the Yield Gap Closing Behind It.” Axis Intelligence, September 3, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/square-statistics/.
Metric citation: Axis Intelligence Research, Merchant Platform Yield (MPY™), Q2 2026 reading, September 3, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as Square GPV, and what does it leave out?
Square GPV is the total dollar amount of all card and bank payments processed by sellers using Square, net of refunds. It excludes Cash App Business GPV, which Block reports as a separate line, and it excludes Block’s buy-now-pay-later volume entirely. Total Block GPV of $74,734 million in Q2 2026 is the sum of Square GPV of $72,848 million and Cash App GPV of $1,886 million.
Is Square’s take rate rising or falling?
Falling slightly on payments, rising on lending. Block’s disclosed commerce enablement monetization rate excluding hardware fell from 1.27% to 1.23% year over year while its financial solutions rate rose from 0.38% to 0.41%. Net, Axis Intelligence Research measures MPY™ at 164.3 basis points in Q2 2026 against 165.1 a year earlier.
Why does Square earn more per dollar than Toast if Toast charges restaurants more?
Because the two platforms monetize different layers. Toast’s yield is concentrated in payments and subscription; Square adds a lending and banking layer through Square Financial Services that contributes 41 basis points on its own. Toast is building the same layer, which is why its MPY™ rose 6.8 basis points in twelve months while Square’s did not.
How many Square sellers are there, and why is the number always approximate?
More than 4.5 million in fiscal 2025. Block discloses the count as a floor rather than an exact figure, which is why any per-seller economics derived from it are ceilings. At 4.5 million sellers, FY2025 gross profit per seller was no more than $875.
Did Block’s 40% workforce reduction hurt Square’s volume?
Not in the quarter the plan concluded. Square GPV growth accelerated to 13% in Q2 2026 with U.S. growth at its strongest since Q2 2023. Payments volume is a trailing indicator of seller relationships, so a single quarter does not settle the question; the mid-market cohort’s growth through 2027 is the more informative signal.
Does Square make money on its hardware?
No. Block discloses hardware as a negative contribution to Square gross profit in every reported quarter, totaling $196 million across the five quarters through June 2026. Toast’s hardware and professional services line was negative $68 million in Q2 2026 alone. In this category, the device is an acquisition cost.
Is Square bigger than Cash App inside Block?
No. Square contributed 36.6% of Block’s consolidated gross profit in Q2 2026, down from 40.5% a year earlier. Cash App produced $1,973 million against Square’s $1,160 million.
Which countries can use Square?
Eight as of the FY2025 Form 10-K: the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, and Spain. International volume was 22% of Square GPV in Q2 2026 and grew 28% year over year.
How large is Square’s lending book?
Square Loans has facilitated more than 4.0 million loans and advances totaling more than $32.8 billion in principal since May 2014. At the Block level, loans held for investment, net, reached $3,749 million at June 30, 2026 against $1,040 million a year earlier.
Where can I download the underlying data?
The full 121-row dataset ships as square-statistics-2026.csv under CC BY 4.0, with source URLs and retrieval dates on every row, and mirrors on Hugging Face, Kaggle, and GitHub.
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