Balance vs Block
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
NYC YC W20 B2B checkout platform increasing conversions 30% and buyer spend 55% with net terms, ACH, and credit; $436.6M total from Lightspeed/Ribbit/Forerunner competing with Stripe for B2B payment infrastructure with embedded accounts receivable.
About
Balance is a New York City-based B2B payments and checkout platform — backed by Y Combinator (W20) with $436.6 million in total funding from Viola Credit, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Avid Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Forerunner Ventures, and others — providing merchants selling to business customers with an embedded B2B checkout that enables net terms (invoicing with 30/60/90-day payment terms), ACH bank transfers, wire payments, credit cards, and virtual credit lines in a single unified checkout experience. Balance serves as B2B payment infrastructure that increases merchant revenue by up to 30% in checkout conversions, lifts average buyer spend by up to 55%, and doubles repeat purchase rates by giving business buyers the payment flexibility their procurement processes require.
San Francisco fintech (NYSE: SQ) added to S&P 500 July 2025; Cash App $5.0B gross profit, Square $3.7B, Afterpay BNPL integration, Jack Dorsey CEO competing with PayPal/Venmo and Stripe for merchant and consumer fintech.
About
Block, Inc. is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company — publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: SQ) as an S&P 500 Information Technology component (added to the S&P 500 on July 23, 2025, replacing Hess Corporation) — operating two primary financial platforms: Square (merchant payment processing, point-of-sale hardware, and business banking for small-to-mid-size merchants) and Cash App (peer-to-peer payments, digital banking, stock investing, and Bitcoin transactions for individuals) alongside Afterpay (buy now pay later), Tidal (music streaming), and TBD (decentralized finance), through approximately 12,000 employees. CEO Jack Dorsey (co-founder with Jim McKelvey in 2009 as Square, rebranded to Block in December 2021) leads the company's strategy of building an interconnected ecosystem of financial services that connect individual consumers (Cash App) with merchants (Square) and the broader financial ecosystem. In fiscal year 2024, Block reported gross profit of approximately $8.9 billion, with Cash App generating approximately $5.0 billion in gross profit (+14% year-over-year) driven by Cash App Card, direct deposit adoption, and Cash App Pay, while Square generated approximately $3.7 billion in gross profit (+9%) driven by software and banking products alongside payment processing. Block acquired Afterpay for $29 billion in January 2022 — integrating the Australian buy-now-pay-later platform into both Square (merchant installment offer at checkout) and Cash App (consumer Afterpay integration).
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