Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Square First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to turn the call over to your host, Jason Lee, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining our Q1 2020 earnings call. We have Jack and Amrita with us today. First, we want to remind everyone of the format of our earnings call. We have published a short out letter on our Investor Relations website, which was available shortly after the market closed.
We will begin this call
with some short remarks before opening the call directly to your questions. During Q and A, we will take questions from our sellers in addition to questions from conference call participants. We would also like to remind everyone that we will be making forward looking statements on this call. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by our forward looking statements. Reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance.
Please take a look at our filings with the SEC for a discussion of the factors that could cause our results to differ. Also, note that the forward looking statements on this call are based on information available to us as of today's date. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward looking statements, except as required by law. During this call, we will be describing preliminary gross profit growth results for the month of April. These represent our current estimate for April performance as we have not yet closed our accounting financials for the month of April and our monthly results are not subject to interim review by our auditors.
As a result, actual April results may differ from these estimates. Also, during this call, we will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in the shareholder letter on our Investor Relations website. These non GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. Additionally, as a reminder, we discontinued the use of adjusted revenue in the Q3 of 2019, following receipt of a comment letter from and discussions with the SEC.
Our statement of operations continues to disclose total net revenue, transaction based costs and Bitcoin costs determined in accordance with GAAP, which are the key components of adjusted revenue. There are no changes to any other GAAP or non GAAP metrics. We have posted a spreadsheet on our Investor Relations website with our historical financials and additional details related to our income statement. Finally, this call's entirety is being audio webcast on our Investor Relations website. An audio replay of this call will be available on our website shortly.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to Jack.
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We're going to start with a few remarks from me and Amrita, and then we'll get to your questions. Before we begin, I want to share our gratitude for all those on the front lines fighting the COVID-nineteen pandemic. We would not be able to do our work without the sacrifices you make every moment to do yours. Thank you to our healthcare workers and everyone providing essential services around the world to keep us all healthy and safe.
We acknowledge and we appreciate you. We've seen our customers rise to the occasion too. While shelter in place orders have slowed foot traffic to our sellers, they found new ways to keep the doors open, retain staff and serve customers. Retailers, wine shops and QSRs launched online ordering by building websites in less than a day for delivery and curbside pickup. Larger full service restaurants opened community markets to sell raw ingredients, produce and food staples through online stores, even Michelin Star Restaurants like Chez Panisse and Berkeley.
Distilleries and tailors shifted to selling personal protective equipment like hand sanitizer and masks, hairdressers and beauticians moved to video appointments to advise on self styling. Over the past 6 weeks, we've also seen Cash App customers come together like never before. Folks are donating to strangers in need through social media, fundraising for charities, small businesses and churches and tipping artists during online performances. Artists like Lil Nas X and Jeffree Star asked people to post their cash tags so they can send their fans money. Diddy hosted a 12 hour dance athon to help raise money for healthcare workers by pinning the cash tag DiddyDance athon to his Instagram Live, all funds going to Direct Relief.
In March, we look critically at our roadmaps and decided to quickly reprioritize our work to advance some initiatives originally slated later in the year. Within 2 weeks of the 1st shelter in place orders, we launched curbside pickup and delivery options in the Square online store and made them free for all sellers. We eliminated fees for our software products in March April and launched a way for sellers to pause these subscriptions to help them cut costs temporarily and quickly unpause them when they rebound. We launched a gift card portal to help buyers search for Square sellers in their neighborhoods to continue to support them. We launched a simple resource hub with information and advice and gave our account management, customer support and sales teams information to enable them to better help our sellers.
As the CARES Act stimulus was being drafted and finalized, teams across both our seller and Cash App ecosystems move fast to help sellers and individuals get access to government support as quickly as possible. 1st, Square Capital secured approval to offer PPP loans. We built a new product that removed complexity from the PPP process by enabling sellers to quickly move through a simple application form. So far, we've submitted $855,000,000 in verified applications on behalf of 54,000 sellers and approximately $520,000,000 has been approved by the SBA to 45,000 sellers. The average loan size to businesses in all 50 states is $12,000 60% of the applicants were sole proprietors, 40% were employers.
Cash App published straightforward FAQs to help folks understand the stimulus program and instructions on how to get their money fast, doubling our web traffic overnight. From there, we worked with our partner banks to expand direct deposit access for Cash App customers, making it easy for people to get their money deposited directly so they could send it to family or friends or use it to purchase whatever they need with their Cash Card. In 4 weeks, the number of Cash App customers with direct deposit access grew from $3,000,000 to $14,000,000 Now more than ever, we see the strength and value of our ecosystem strategy. It comes down to speed and trust. Our tools have been have proven to be simple enough that anyone, current or new customers can quickly pick them up and adapt to many different challenges they may meet.
And we have shown that we aren't just here to provide tools, but help and support navigating complexity safely. This is a transformative moment and as a business, we've made the strategic decision to invest through this challenge to come out on the other side in the position of strength. We see significant opportunity to bring new sellers and individuals into our ecosystems and build and launch new products to serve them, both today and long term. And while we slowed non essential hiring, we believe this is a unique opportunity to find great people, so we prioritize critical roles to help us. We're working on something foundational to society, and we're really proud of our agility and heart through these times.
Thanks to all of our customers, our employees and you for the trust as we continue to build and serve. And with that, over to Amrita.
Thanks, Jack. I hope you all are safe and with your families during this time. And I echo Jack's comments with gratitude for those on the front lines of this pandemic. There are 3 key items which I'd like to share with you today. 1st, on our Q1 results, we achieved strong growth in January and February prior to the significant slowdown in our seller business in the last 2 weeks of March.
2nd, on trends in April, we saw early signs of potential stabilization and improvement in our seller ecosystem with continued strong momentum in Cash App. 3rd, we believe it's now more important than ever to invest behind our mission of economic empowerment and service of our customers. First, a look at our overall Q1 results. We achieved strong growth in January February prior to the slowdown in seller in the last 2 weeks of March. Overall in the Q1, gross profit was $539,000,000 up 36% year over year or 40% growth year over year excluding Caviar.
These growth rates are about 10 points lower than what we observed through January February prior to the impact of COVID-nineteen. Our seller ecosystem gross profit grew 18% year over year in the Q1. This includes the last 2 weeks of March where seller GPV decelerated sharply to a decline of 39% year over year. Card payment volumes were down approximately 60% year over year in the last 2 weeks of March, while card not present volumes were less affected. Additionally, we refunded all March software subscription fees for our sellers to support them during the COVID-nineteen pandemic.
And beginning in mid March, we paused new core flex loan offers for Square Capital given lower visibility in this disruptive time. Cash App delivered impressive growth in the Q1 with gross profit up 115% year over year. While we saw a modest deceleration in peer to peer volumes and Cash Card spend from COVID-nineteen in March, overall growth remains strong with Cash App gross profit up 112% year over year in March. A key driver remains efficient new customer acquisition. In March and then again in April, Cash App set new highs for its number of net new monthly transacting actives.
For our Bitcoin and stock brokerage products, the market volatility helped increase adoption and drive strong volume growth during the quarter. Turning to profitability. Net loss was $106,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA was $9,000,000 during the Q1 with 2 key factors to call out. First, the primary impact in the quarter was a significant increase in reserves for transaction and loan losses, which reflected an estimate for the anticipated impact of COVID-nineteen on future losses related to seller transaction processing and Square Capital. We recognize actual losses could vary based on severity and duration of the impact of COVID-nineteen.
The second lesser factor was the slowdown in high margin revenue in our seller ecosystem in the last 2 weeks of March. The macroeconomic environment we are experiencing is unlike anything we have seen. Our focus is on our customers and communities who have been meaningfully impacted. We also recognize there could be a wide range of outcomes for our financial results in the Q2 and the remainder of the year depending on the length and severity of COVID-nineteen. Therefore, we are not providing 2nd quarter or full year revenue or earnings financial guidance at this time.
Instead, we wanted to share with you what we are seeing in real time with an update on business trends from April, including early signs of potential stabilization and improvement in seller GPV with continued momentum in Cash App. In our seller ecosystem, we expect gross profit to be down approximately 35% year over year in April. Cellular GPV was down 39% year over year in April. While we saw a decline of approximately 45% year over year from the last week of March through the first half of April, as trend lines stabilized at these levels, we have seen improving growth rates since mid April. We recognize it's still early and we continue to see daily volatility, but we've been encouraged by these recent trends.
We believe this improvement coincides with a few potential factors. 1, existing sellers adapting as they shift to omnichannel commerce 2, acquisition of new sellers 3, the timing of Easter and 4, a benefit from government stimulus efforts. While GPV from in person activity was down significantly year over year in April, card not present GPV achieved positive year over year growth. As we saw sellers adapt their businesses and leverage many of our omni channel offerings. Square online store was an area of strong growth and acquisition with weekly GPV up more than 5x since mid March and with the strongest adoption by sellers in 2 of the hardest hit verticals, food and drink and retail.
Notably, we saw over 2 thirds of Square online store GPV come from our recently launched pickup and delivery service. Additionally, we have taken measures to support our customers and protect our company through COVID-nineteen, measures that will impact seller top line results in the Q2, but we believe benefit us and our customers for the long term. We waived subscription fees for our sellers in April and offered the option to pause subscription billing temporarily to allow our sellers to better manage costs. For Square Capital, while we paused offers for new core Flex loans, the core Flex loan, we intend to reopen Flex loan origination where we see stability in the coming weeks months. As you heard from Jack, we started distributing loans in the 2nd round of PPP.
While there is a tremendous amount of work happening here to support our sellers, we don't expect capital to contribute materially to revenue and gross profit in the Q2. Turning to Cash App performance in April, where we expect gross profit growth of over 100% year over year. Cash App's strong performance was broad based as we achieved our highest monthly totals for net new transacting active, peer to peer volume, cash card spend, new direct deposit transacting active, Bitcoin and stock brokerage volumes and stored funds. After modest initial deceleration in late March, Cash App peer to peer volumes and Cash Card spend improved during the first half of April as we saw customers seek new use cases for sending money and shift commerce to e commerce channels. During the second half of April, the CARES Act stimulus program helps drive even stronger growth across various Cash App products.
In particular, we saw strong adoption of direct deposit from Cash App customers compared to March. April direct deposit volumes grew by 3x and new direct deposit transacting assets grew by 4x. This helped drive customers to store more than $1,300,000,000 in aggregate cash balances during the month, which roughly doubled compared to the beginning of January and was up 1.4x month over month. While we are encouraged by Cash App's results in April, we will continue to monitor how customer behavior normalizes post stimulus in this dynamic macro environment. Turning to my final topic, our investment framework and key factors that impact profitability.
1st, as I mentioned earlier, we have high incremental margins in our seller business. As a result, decreases in seller gross profit will largely flow through to profitability. 2nd, transaction and loan losses in future quarters are determined by 2 primary inputs, actual losses on 1st quarter volumes, which could prove higher or lower than our Q1 reserves and estimates for expected losses on volumes generated in subsequent periods. Both of these inputs may vary depending on the length and severity of COVID-nineteen impact. As it relates to Q2 volumes, we and our sellers have taken steps to mitigate risks in this new macro environment, but this is an area we continue to watch closely.
3rd, while we have reviewed our operating expenses and taken steps to pull back discretionary expenses where appropriate, we believe it is now more important than ever to invest in our mission of economic empowerment in service of both sellers and individuals. We have pulled back certain non essential spend around seller marketing, hiring for non critical positions, facilities build out, travel, company events and other discretionary expenses, leading to an expected reduction in 2020 non GAAP operating expenses of $75,000,000 to $125,000,000 compared to our initial expectations for 2020 product development, sales and marketing and G and A. For the Q2, we expect non GAAP product development, sales and marketing and G and A in aggregate to be in line with 1st quarter spend. We intend to pursue originally planned Cash App investments given strong performance and as a reminder, a large portion of Cash's operating expenses such as P2P costs are non discretionary and expected to scale along with the growth of the platform. While we are being appropriately deliberate with our investments in our seller ecosystem, we've seen encouraging early signs of attractive returns on marketing that could lead us to add back investment to reach new customers.
We deferred our global brand campaign and shifted our sales and marketing messages to prioritize targeted omni channel products and multi product awareness campaigns. We saw early signs early results in mid March April that indicate the quality of new sellers improved from pre COVID levels, as recent cohorts of sellers were larger on both the volume and gross profit basis. We believe our seller ecosystem is significantly differentiated, especially in times like these. Our portfolio of products enable sellers to quickly move between offline and online commerce in an integrated and seamless manner, speed up money movements and communicate with buyers in a way that few other companies can offer. For Cash App, this is a unique moment in which new consumer driven commerce habits are taking shape.
The Cash App team is focused on crafting new experiences with a demonstrated product velocity that hasn't flowed in this time of great disruption. Zach mentioned our team's efforts around the stimulus. The resulting inflection on direct deposit is meaningful. Direct deposit customers have generated revenue, which is multiples higher compared to customers who only use peer to peer. As Cash App has added more products, we've expanded the addressable market opportunity.
As customers have increased their adoption of those products, their lifetime value has increased, which has driven improvements in Cash App's profitability over time. And we believe it is still early days. Finally, our strong balance sheet with $3,400,000,000 in liquidity at the end of the Q1 and a recently upsized revolver affords us the opportunity to be deliberate and long term oriented as we invest. The work we do to serve our customers has never been more urgent or important. We believe the investments we make today to support our existing customers amplify our go to market approach reaching new customers and strategically and selectively hire great talent will enable us to emerge stronger as we look ahead to a recovery.
I'll now turn it back to the operator to start the Q and A portion of the call.
Our first question comes from the line of Tien Tsin Huang from JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks so much for this data. I wanted to ask, I think you sort of touched upon it, both of you did, just how you're approaching management on the seller side, both for Square Capital and underwriting in general. It sounds like you are skewing a little bit bigger, which is helping on the quality as you suggested. So just anything else to add to that?
And then also just to clarify, because I'm getting some questions on it. In the Q1 EBITDA, how much was driven by the higher loss reserve? And I presume that should stabilize if volumes stabilize. And looking ahead, is it fair to apply a decremental margin that look like your incremental margin when things are going well? I think that was in the 60s.
All else equal, is that a good starting point to think about that all else equal? Thank you.
Hey, Tien Tsin, I can start us off. Maybe I'll start us off with your second question around EBITDA impacts for the Q1, and then we can tackle the rest of your questions. With respect to EBITDA in the Q1, which was $9,000,000 there were 2 primary impacts. The larger of the impact was related to risk loss reserves, which we'll speak to in a moment. The lesser of the impact was the top line impact and the flow through to margin there.
As you noted, high incremental margins on our seller business, which benefits us obviously as revenues grow. And then we saw the impact in the other direction in terms of decremental margins in the last 2 weeks of the quarter for Q1. Q1 ex risk loss EBITDA would have been up even with the impact of the last 2 weeks of March, EBITDA would have been up 30% year over year. So risk loss, clearly the larger impact for Q1. Let me talk through some of the puts and takes with respect to our transaction and loan losses.
And then we can see if there's more of your question that I've missed. So with respect to transaction and loan losses, we booked 109 $1,000,000 in the Q1, primarily driven by the seller transaction processing volume in the Q1 along with our capital loans on balance sheet of just over $160,000,000 And the way you can look at that is for both of those two areas, the reserve that we took, which is an estimate at this point, the reserve that we took is about 4x higher than the prior quarterly run rate on a dollar basis. So think of Q4, what we took in Q1 was about 4x higher. To give you a sense of what we're tracking, we watch charge backs on the seller side related to non delivery of goods as one indicating a leading indicator of losses. And what we've seen so far in charge backs is actually less than 2x normal levels.
However, we know that what we see here, is very much dependent on what happens in terms of the duration and severity of the COVID impacts and that we could see additional losses. Hence, we set a provision in reserve that's 4x the typical levels. On the capital business, similar sort of approach, dollars 22,000,000 provision on the capital loans on our balance sheet, which is about 4x the prior run rate on a dollar basis, but only about 2.5x from a loss rate basis. And similarly, seeing lower in terms of current repayment flows than what we actually booked in the expectation that there would be further impact from COVID. And to your question, we have taken risk mitigating measures to manage our exposure in this very dynamic time.
Some of the things that we've done on the seller business are manage our exposure related to higher risk sellers, including assessing some of the industries and products that have been most impacted in this time, Releasing disputes management features and products that help our sellers, for instance, SMS reminders to help sellers navigate a dispute process for a contract service, which is a legal framework for extended payment terms. On the capital side, we've paused core Flex loan originations for now. But as we see stabilization across verticals, across geos and on particular sellers, we do plan to reopen our core flex loan product in the coming weeks and months. In terms of the future outlook here in terms of risk loss, there are a number of puts and takes obviously that as I mentioned in the intro remarks, there is the actual losses that flow through in Q1, which could be higher or lower than the reserve assumptions that we've made. There's future GPV levels.
There's the mix of products that we serve and the mix of verticals. And then there's these actions that we're taking to mitigate our risks as we look forward. So this is an area that could be variable, but we're very, very focused on monitoring here and taking proactive measures to manage our risk.
Your next question comes from the line of Darrin Peller. Your line is open.
Hey, thanks guys. Glad to
hear you're all doing okay. Look, first just addressing the questions we get around the resilience of your customers. Is there any early indications you
can give us into a sense of the types of
merchants that the numbers that are managing through this versus perhaps not maybe the mix of merchants we should expect on the other side of this? And then really more importantly looking through 2020, you guys clearly have some of the better omni channel technology. And so can you comment on the kind of inbounds you're getting from your merchants to help them with your tech and omni channel? And what does that mean for market share for Square versus the industry on the other side of this?
Hey there. I'll start us off on what we're seeing, to start and then, Jack can jump in on where we believe our ecosystem is differentiated. So what we're seeing so far in terms of the diversity of our ecosystem, because you're right, we serve a variety of verticals. We serve across a number of geographies, some with shelter in place measures, most with shelter in place measures and some that are easing, both domestically and internationally. And we serve a variety of products across our ecosystem.
So let me try to tease apart a bit of what we're seeing across all of that. At the aggregate level, what we saw in the back half of March and then through April was seller GPV down 39% year over year. But it's important to tease apart the nuances when you look on a week by week basis. The last week of March and the first half of April was down about 45% year over year. In the back half of April, we've seen improvement, that has rebounded above that blended 39% year over year number.
We believe it's driven by 3 main factors. First, existing sellers adapting to contactless commerce and we'll talk through some of the products that we have that have really served our sellers in this time and enabled them to stay open and interacting with their buyers. We've seen new sellers join our platform in this time because of the differentiated aspect of our ecosystem. And we've seen the impact of both the timing of Easter and the potential impact from the government stimulus programs, which have really started taking effect in mid April. From a commerce type perspective, which really speaks to the breadth of our ecosystem, we have seen positive year over year growth in our card not present products as sellers have adapted to contactless commerce solutions.
And now card not present products, which used to account for about a third of our volumes, now account for well 50% of our GPV in April. Some of the key outperformers to point out here include the online store, which since the launch of curbside pickup and seller powered delivery, I mentioned our weekly GPV on the online store is about 5x what we had seen earlier in Q1 as sellers are shifting their approach to contactless options. Additionally, virtual terminal and invoices both achieved positive year over year growth, which may be partly related to the less impact we've seen in the services vertical, which really makes use of that product. From a market standpoint or a geographic standpoint, we've seen a variety of outcomes across international markets, Australia, interestingly, which has had the most success in reducing COVID cases is our first market was our first market to return to positive year over year growth in the past 10 days as we've seen growth rates stabilize in that positive range. And we've also seen, as I mentioned, in some of the states in the U.
S. That in late April started easing shelter in place restrictions, early data that indicates a stronger uplift in those states versus the states with shelter in place measures in place. We only have a week of data so far and obviously there's a lot to look at here, a lot of considerations around health metrics and otherwise, but this is an area that we will continue to monitor. Across the diversity of our seller base, as you noted, we serve sellers across every vertical, millions of businesses, widespread across the U. S.
In particular. We've seen impacts from COVID-nineteen in a number of different ways. While all industries have experienced year over year declines in GPV, the services vertical, as I mentioned, like home and repair and professional services has been the most resilient. And we've seen verticals that have been hard hit like food and beverage and retail make use of those omni channel products that I was mentioning earlier. By seller size, this will maybe be my final point before Jack chimes in.
By seller size, all size segments were impacted. Micro sellers growth declines are now more comparable to larger sellers. But what you see with micros is both higher churn and higher same store sales growth. So it's still nuance across the system, but serve a diversity across verticals, geographies and products.
Hey, Darren. Hope you're well. Yes, so we are seeing a lot of opportunity here. We are seeing sellers switch to Square from our competitors because of the omni channel ecosystem. We in terms of inbound, the first and foremost was just how do I run my business online.
And we were able to quickly help people shift. And a lot of these sellers wanted to get online and wanted to sell online, but just didn't make the time to do so. So this was kind of a forcing function to show them all the benefits of being online. And I think what that ultimately does is they will have a lot more attention online as the offline comes back and be much stronger businesses because of it, which is awesome. We've also seen some calls from very large sellers, which have increased since March.
It's been up over 30% and they're coming to us because of the omnichannel ecosystem as well. We saw just one example, we had a chain of breweries, which is struggling to adapt with the pandemic. And they came to us, took days to install their online business with a competitor. Instead, we were able to get them up and running much, much faster. So they switched everything to us.
So it's really important to emphasize that as we come out of this, we do believe that a lot of sellers are going to get creative and they're not just going to be in the retail category or in the restaurants category or in services category. They're going to merge these things. And Square is the only one out there that actually covers all the verticals, with all the critical tools, to actually be creative and serve your customers in new ways. So we're seeing larger sellers at scale. We're seeing our current customers and we're seeing new customers who see this omnichannel offering and want to go with us because we're easier.
And I do believe that the speed at which we're able to move and the volume we are able to move with the PPP program for our sellers versus the rest of the financial institutions will be a net positive for us in terms of a goodwill halo, attracting a lot of sellers our way, because they're very, very rich seller networks of sellers asking another seller what tools to use and why, what's the company like, what have they done well for you in the past and what have they done poorly. So I think how we've handled our sellers and supported them throughout this time will be a huge win for us in terms of retaining, but also newer sellers as well.
And just to add a final point to that, some of the marketing results that we're seeing that I mentioned earlier are showing that those new weekly seller cohorts that we're attracting since the middle of March are larger both in aggregate across the cohort and on an individual seller by seller basis, versus pre COVID levels, which really shows to underscore the points Jack was making that we believe we're a differentiated ecosystem that's attracting not only larger sellers, but broader sizes of cohorts of sellers in this very dynamic time.
All right. That's helpful. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Dan Misuraca from Red, White and Q. Your line is open.
Hi. I'm a square seller with Red White and Q Smokehouse here in Kearney, New Jersey. Regarding inventory, Square online store shelves sold out on the live site once an item inventory hits 0. But for a business like ours, we have a variable amount each day. As more quick service restaurants like us at Red Wine Q shift to Square online store during the COVID-nineteen.
We're seeing more need for a flexible inventory management system. Are there plans to build up features like this for quick service restaurants use Square online store?
Hey, Dan, this is Jack. Thanks for using Square and hope you're staying safe. This is something we're actively working on. Inventory is a big focus area for us and we accelerated a bunch of our roadmap in order to support curbside pickup and delivery. And we need to make sure that we're adding the option to organize orders by fulfillment channel, added a site on mobile without the app, modified delivery zones.
So we're getting a ton of feedback in this time on what's working and what's not working in regards to inventory and generally with the system as we've shifted to this new world. And we're working as fast as we can on it. So appreciate the feedback and we're on it.
Your next question comes from the line of Lisa Ellis from MoffettNathanson. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. Good to hear you guys' voices. My question is on related to Cash App and the transaction activity you're seeing there. Last week Visa reported that their U. S.
Debit volumes were actually trending positive low single digits in late April due to some of the stimulus spending. Are you seeing similar trends like that on the cash card? And then looking forward, do you expect cash card volumes to remain pretty resilient because they're tied to non discretionary spending? Or how are you thinking about the employment impact there? Are a lot of the Cash App users, some of the folks that unfortunately we're seeing unemployed currently.
What's just your outlook in general for the transaction activity on Cash Card? Thank you.
Hey, Lisa, I'll start us off. Thanks for the question. April was a strong month, as you heard, for Cash App overall and including for Cash Card where we saw Cash Card's highest monthly total for both orders and for volumes of spend across the Cash Card. Following the deceleration that we saw in late March, growth troughed around the end of March and spend began to rebound in early April even before the stimulus payments, which roughly came in about mid April. Ahead of the government stimulus program, customers explored direct deposit functionality and engaged with the app, we saw a significant increase in Cash Card orders and a growth in active across the active base for Cash Card.
And that was prior to the 2nd IRS portal release on April 15. As the stimulus payments were dispersed, we saw material increase in volumes per card active as Cash App serves really a critical need here by helping customers access and use their funds rapidly. The uplift in weekly spend has continued in the second half of the April, although still below pre COVID levels. We're seeing the spending behavior on Cash Card shift towards more card not present and online commerce, as you can understand given shelter in place measures. We're also seeing elevated non discretionary spend, grocers, health and wellness, retail, away from bars, restaurants, entertainment, transportation, that we would have seen pre COVID.
And we believe the unique aspect that we have here with the Boost program has positioned us to help individuals, where we're using our ecosystem here to help benefit our customers and actively rotating our Boost Rewards, offered to specific merchants and categories, including things like grocery, pharmacies and dollar stores. In terms of the broader question about unemployment, we are very watchful here and we want to see what normalized spending looks like post the stimulus efforts. So it's probably too early for us to say, but we are very encouraged both in the growth of the base of users across Cash App and Cash Card and the depth of engagement that we've seen through products like direct deposit, in the last weeks months.
Super helpful. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Timothy Chaddow from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Thank you for taking my question. Also related to Cash App and a little bit of a follow-up there on direct deposit. So yes, the Cash App stats across the board were pretty impressive, especially I think the direct deposit was really a standout. The shareholder letter shows direct deposit active users up more than it looks like more than 2x month over month into April and mentioned the stimulus checks being a big driver there of the direct deposit activity. But what can you tell us about these users in terms of perhaps their propensity to continue to use direct deposit with their pay checks beyond the stimulus?
And then as somewhat of a follow-up there, what are some of the things in general that Cash App either has already done or is planning to do to help continue that strong adoption of primary account usage. I did notice that you mentioned the eligibility increased from about $3,000,000 to $14,000,000 in terms of direct deposit. So that sounds like a pretty good start.
Yes. Thanks, Tim. I hope you're well. We do believe direct deposit is a huge opportunity. And as we said in the opening, direct deposit customers are some of the most engaged on the platform and they typically carry much higher balances and use more of our products like Bitcoin and equities in addition to Cash Card and peer to peer.
We saw 2 significant bumps recently. Customers have received their tax refunds and deposited paychecks, used our ecosystem a whole lot more. We saw an increase in P2P volumes and cash card spend in late February and also in late March. And then in April, obviously, the government stimulus provided us an opportunity to help folks receive their money much, much faster. And our teams did work, as you mentioned, with our partner banks to expand the 3,000,000 direct deposit accounts we had in February to 14,000,000 dollars We also made sure that the interface was really clear.
So when you click into the tab that is actually where your money is stored, you should see your direct deposit routing number right away. So just putting it upfront so that people know that this is a tool that can be used for tax, for your stimulus, for your paycheck at your job is critical. And that does lead to people seeing Cash App ultimately as a primary account, not needing to go to a bank branch, simply going to the App Store, signing up and they are in business. And it's not just around peer to peer and storing money and using on a card, but the people who are using that money to buy equities, using the investing product and also by Bitcoin, has been pretty incredible. So, this is part of the reason why we think the ecosystem strategy is so strong.
We're not just a peer to peer app. We're not just a stock purchasing app. We're not just a Bitcoin app. We have everything in one. And everything that is interesting in terms of how I think about my own personal finances and spend my money is all in one simple straightforward app that we will continue to make better and that more adjacent features that complement some of these critical needs that people are telling us they have.
And Tim, just to add a couple of metrics to this topic. From March to April, we saw direct deposit volumes grow by 3x. From March to April, we saw new direct deposit transacting active grow by 4x. And from March to April, we saw our stored funds grow from $945,000,000 across the base of Cash App users to over $1,300,000,000 So clearly, this is a product that's resonated. We believe we're in a transformational moment right now where new commerce standards, new banking habits, new ways of conducting financial services and commerce are taking shape.
And Cash App, along with our seller business has an opportunity to serve our customers uniquely in this moment. So while I think it's early for us to say what happens or what changes with the curve of direct deposit in the future, this is a key priority for us and encouraging signs that we've seen in the month of April here.
Great. Thanks a lot. Definitely noted on the metrics, the change to the interface and more features to come. So thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Josh Beck from KeyBanc. Your line is open.
Yes. Thank you for taking the question and really impressive I wanted to ask a higher level question on Cash App. When you look at the newer customers that you've maybe pulled in, in the last month or so, is it expanding the audience and addressable market in any ways? And obviously, you had some really good stats on the online store. Any sense to give us how many sellers have actually lit up that product?
That would be really helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Josh. We are I do believe it is expanding the audience pretty dramatically. Cash App has been something really special for us and that it has a lot of association with a pretty strong culture. It's not seen as just a traditional financial app. It's seen as part of the culture in many ways and we're seeing that play out especially now during COVID-nineteen.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks like all the donating that's happening on social media, the fundraising, the tipping to artists and musicians, this is all pretty net new and we're looking at this closely and we're taking the opportunities to form partnerships if there are some. Send money to artists that post their cash tag on their artist page. And send money to artists that post their cash tag on their artist page. And more than 25,000 artists have already linked their Cash App account with Spotify. And we saw more than 100,000 tipped in the 1st week since the launch.
Another big area is gamers. We're seeing a lot of activity in regards to Cash App on Twitch. In the Q1, we launched our Twitch channel and we've grown our follower count to over 180,000. But what's interesting about this is like there's a lot of similarities between what we're seeing around music and also gaming and how Cash App is being used in both. So we have reached a very mainstream influential audience.
And because of the simplicity, because of how we handle the stimulus check and because of everything that you can do within the app inclusive of buying stocks and Bitcoin and the Cash Card, we think will benefit and draft off a lot of trust, a lot of love for what it offers and what it can do. And word-of-mouth is definitely our friend here. So we consistently see the Cash App in the top 10 of the app stores and consistently see it rise as new people broadcast their own use of it. So there's a very nice viral loop that is inherent in the system that continues to compound and grow favorably? On the second question, how many sellers have used Square online store?
Amrita, do you want to take this?
Sure. I'll hit that one. And maybe just one final point before I do that on the cash opportunity. As you'll remember, Josh, we released some slides, in late March related to addressable market across both our Cash App ecosystem and the seller ecosystem. Cash App Ecosystem addresses over 100,000,000 people in the U.
S. With a target age of between 1539, which represents $60,000,000,000 of opportunity across just the product areas that we serve today. So we envision a really significant runway ahead for Cash App. And Cash App in the month of April at various points was in the top five of the iOS App Store in terms of downloaded apps only behind some chat apps. So clearly resonating, as Jack said, in this sort of cultural moment that we're in.
Turning to your second question on Square Online Store. We can speak about Square Online Store and then let's level up and talk about broader our CMP offerings, our card not present offerings. The online store, we haven't provided a usage number in terms of active sellers, but on a weekly GPD basis up 5x since mid March pre COVID effectively. And our most recent weekly GPV run rate was at $59,000,000 or $3,000,000,000 on an annualized basis. And now the daily sign ups that we're seeing, the Square online store are higher in number than what our typical sign ups would have been for the point of sale app pre COVID.
So clearly resonating and resonating for new sellers as well as existing sellers. But again, I would think about our broader as I mentioned earlier, are now over 50% of our volumes versus a third of our volumes prior to COVID. And that spans not just for online store, but invoices, virtual terminal, parts of our developer platform with the e commerce API. And this has been an area of strength for us with positive GPV growth year over year in the month of April.
Very helpful, Jack and Amrita. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Josh. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jason Kupferter from Bank of America. Your line is open.
Hi, this is Cassie on for Jason. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to get an update on seller churn and whether you found specific programs or initiatives with sellers to be particularly effective and perhaps if you have any new products or initiatives coming maybe to complement some of the existing ones you already have? Thank you.
I can maybe start us off on this one. So in terms of churn, it's typically a variable figure for us given the large portion of micro sellers that we serve who may be seasonal. So given the noise that we see today how early trends are shaping up, the main indicator I'd point you towards would be change in gross profit or change in GPV growth, which as noted for the seller business is in that minus 35% or minus 39% range for the month of April. We've noted earlier on the call that the back half of April, we've seen improving trends based on existing sellers transitioning to new forms of commerce, based on new sellers coming in, based on stimulus efforts. We've also noted that certain areas with easing shelter in place measures, we've seen further improvement.
And what we've seen in terms of number of unique cards and number of unique sellers in the back half of April has also improved, which to us indicates that we have sellers who are able to reopen their business in the back half of April. So those are kind of the trends that we've seen around churn. In terms of the key things that we can do for our sellers, I think a lot of them have been noted on this call. Sellers are looking for omni channel solutions that enable them to interact with their buyers in new formats, whether that's commerce, online, invoices, etcetera. They're also looking for cash flow and opportunities to bridge them in this really disruptive time.
And the PPP program where we've helped enable over $500,000,000 in loans in the past week has also gone a long way to supporting our sellers and speaks to the strength of the ecosystem that we were able to move quickly and get this product up and running in just a few short weeks. Within each of these products, you see features that are working towards supporting our sellers, whether it's pre populating applications in the PPP program for payroll sellers or it's the order and pickup delivery product that was launched in the span of a few short weeks, as well as on the cash business where these sprints towards enabling government stimulus and direct deposit accounts, our teams are working very, very hard. No boondoggles happening at the company right now. Our teams are working very, very hard to enable new products and features across supporting our sellers and individuals.
Kasey, this is also one of the areas where the ecosystem strategy makes us a lot stronger. A seller may churn out of 1 product, but still be using 2 others or 3 others from us. So they're not churning out of the whole company. And as we add more of those critical functions and tools, that gets even more and more durable. So a lot of the reason why behind the ecosystem strategy is exactly this.
But like everyone else, we're learning as quickly as possible in partnership with our sellers on what's working during this time, what they need, how they think about rebounding as more things reopen. And all those learnings will be distilled into products and features going forward. And we're doing that with their current customers or small customers and even our larger customers who are rediscovering new ways and discovering our other tools like Ben and Jerry's is a good example of this. They use our point of sale across 200 retail shops and needed to pivot to online. So we showed we demoed the Square online store and they're rolling it out nationwide over the coming weeks.
So if you're very small or very large, what we think helps the most with retaining is making sure that people see our full suite of services and are getting value out of them.
Great. Thanks for the answer.
Your next question comes from the line of Jason Freeman from Susquehanna. Your line is open.
Hi. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Good to hear your voices. Ben and Jerry's making me hungry.
I just want
to ask, with part of
the investment and operating narrative has been about the cross selling of seller and Cash App. And I was just wondering in light of the current business environment, how that may have affected your thinking on the cross selling of cash and seller ecosystems. You had a lot of good use cases, Jack, in your prepared remarks. So is that something that you're moving forward in terms of your kind of time horizon? Thank you.
Yes.
Great question, Jimmy. So we are moving forward. We did have to reprioritize our roadmap just to handle some of the issues that we're presently seeing and challenges we're seeing with our sellers and cash out customers due to COVID. But we do believe that there is a lot of real strength that comes from connecting the 2 ecosystems. They're amazing independently, But as we look for those connection points, whether they be boost to local sellers, what we've done with our payroll product and paying employees with Cash App so they could access their funds immediately.
There's a number of those that we think are really interesting and potentially really impactful. But we wanted to make sure that we're handling the present challenge first. But we're definitely not taking our eyes off the ball in terms of how we connect these 2 down the line. Thank you. Thank you.
Your last question comes from the line of Ramsey El Assal from Barclays. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. This is Ben on for Ramsey and thanks so much for taking the question. I guess kind of wanted to follow-up on some of the earlier questions about the change in the product roadmap. I noticed international revenue had grown pretty nicely in the quarter. And I guess, first, is that just due to a kind of a broader suite of products now being rolled out to all the countries?
But more specific to the question, I'm kind of wondering, is that one of the opportunities you see being pushed out and kind of how does your roadmap specifically there change with everything going on right now?
Maybe I can kick us off with what we've seen from an international perspective in the Q1 and in April. From an April perspective, international GCV was down 20%, which was a deceleration versus prior COVID levels. From a Q1 perspective, GAAP international revenue was up 51%, so strong growth for us and consistent with what we had seen in the prior couple of quarters where we had seen outperformance as our products are resonating internationally. In terms of breaking down some of those trends related to COVID that we've seen in April, As I mentioned earlier in April in Australia, we're now seeing positive year over year growth. From a UK perspective, we're seeing modest declines and Japan and Canada are still down year over year, but seeing improvement as well.
So very consistent with the broader narratives that we've been sharing on this call so far from a COVID impact perspective. And obviously our products continue to resonate there from an omni channel perspective internationally as they do in the U. S.
Yes. And just a follow-up, we're not going to we're not going to take our focus off growing outside of the United States and making sure that our ecosystem is sound and comprehensive outside the United States. We have done a lot of good work over the past few quarters, but there's a lot more to do. And the same needs that we see during this time in the U. S.
With COVID, we're seeing globally as well. And we want to make sure that the thing that sets us apart is a secret system and it has to set us apart not just in the United States, but everywhere. And we've learned a ton from the U. S. And how various products took off and that helps our sequencing around these roadmaps.
So we can be more sure of the impact as we put the work in to actually do the work to launch.
Great. Thanks so much for taking my question.
Thank you, Ben. Thank you.
I'd like to turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for joining our call. I would like to remind everyone that we've been hosting our Q2 2020 earnings call on August 5. Thanks again for participating today.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.