The device is tied to a Cash App debit account and is primarily aimed at teens and young adults. “Cash App Wand is designed to align with the way Generation Z expresses its style and identity,” the company said in a statement. This is the first step toward creating a whole line of custom payment gadgets – from fitness bracelets to baseball caps with a chip inside, Bloomberg writes.
The idea of Block follows a trend in social networks: in recent months, videos with a similar plastic “wand” for credit cards, which users showed in supermarkets and Disneyland, have gained popularity there. Block’s Magic Wand takes that concept further. According to the company’s head of hardware, Thomas Templeton, test participants enjoyed demonstrating the device at the checkout. “We see a unique opportunity here to make payments visible and social for the first time,” he noted.
The new product comes at a challenging time for Cash App amid scandals related to inadequate customer verification and weak fraud protection. The company has paid out a total of $190 million in two major cases. This hit user numbers, and Block has been actively rebuilding its audience ever since. Youth has been a key growth point: according to the company, one in five U.S. teens already uses a Cash App card, and the average age of Cash App Green loyalty program members is about 34, versus 50 for traditional bank customers.
The company has also improved its financial performance, with Cash App’s profits up 38% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026. The service makes money not only on transfers, but also on credit products, in particular on the “Buy Now, Pay Later” function.
Jack Dorsey is one of the founders of Twitter (2006), where he served as CEO until 2008. He returned to that position in 2015 and led the company until 2021 before leaving the board in 2022. His fortune is estimated at $6.3 billion, according to Forbes Real-Time data.
