Lithic vs Block
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
Card issuing and payment infrastructure platform for developers. NYC, raised $60M+, provides card APIs for fintech companies and platforms building embedded payment products.
About
Lithic is a card issuing and payment infrastructure platform built for developers and product teams building embedded payment experiences. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in New York City, the company has raised over $60 million in funding. Lithic provides APIs for virtual and physical card issuance, transaction authorization, spend controls, and payment data that companies integrate into their software products to add card-based financial capabilities.\n\nLithic's developer-first approach distinguishes it in the card issuing space — the platform is designed for technical teams who want to integrate card functionality directly into their product without the overhead of working through traditional banking infrastructure. Its sandbox environment allows developers to test card programs end-to-end before going live, and its documentation and SDK support accelerate time to production. Lithic handles the regulatory infrastructure including BIN sponsorship, network membership, and issuer licensing on behalf of its customers.\n\nLithic's card programs support a range of use cases including corporate expense cards, marketplace disbursement cards, gaming and rewards cards, and B2B payment cards. The platform's programmable spend controls allow issuers to set merchant category restrictions, transaction limits, and velocity controls that enforce specific spending policies for each card type. Lithic has focused on transparency and pricing clarity as differentiators in a market where interchange economics and interchange sharing structures are often opaque.
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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