GANDT Fireside Chat #034 | The development of the Cash App in the USA and XING sets a new member record

True to our motto “Working Out Loud”, we at GANDT Ventures exchange our thoughts and ideas on current news topics. The topics from around the world ranges from online marketing, digital retail to e-commerce. This helps us uncover opportunities that can be used for companies and our clients as part of our daily business.

But most of all, it is a lot of fun and a great way to share knowledge.Our podcast chats are available to anyone who is interested what Google, Facebook, Amazon and co. are up to.

The development of the “Cash App” in the USA with the help of lotteries

The payment service app “Cash App” has been going through the roof in the USA for some time now. 83 million downloads, 24 million active users and over $1 billion in revenue, the app counts.

But what made the app, which is reminiscent of the well-known service provider PayPal, so successful?

The payment service developed by Square relied on marketing strategies such as Tiktok-Influencer, HipHop stars and Twitter lotteries. These are not very widespread in the financial sector – but it worked.

The handling of the app seems relatively simple: Each user is assigned an unique “$Cashtag”. Users who want to send money enter this cashtag into the app – similar to how PayPal works with mail addresses.

But Square used this $Cashtag at the same time to make the app well-known: Users can post their individual cashtag on Twitter lotteries and winners are then drawn from all tweets, who in turn receive money.

The winnings are not insignificant – on “Super Cash App Friday” the company sometimes (as recently on 29 May) gives away 50,000 US dollars.

Since the start of these lottery campaigns, the app has gone viral and has been mentioned in hip-hop songs and TikTok videos. Cooperation with well-known brands such as Burger King was not long in coming.

Listen to our Fireside Chat and find out how long it took the company to pay back the initial investment in the campaigns.

XING posts new member record

Just recently, in our Fireside Chat #032, we talked about the development of LinkedIn and asked ourselves how XING performed during the Corona crisis.

Now we have the answer – XING even seems to be able to beat the impressive figures from LinkedIn, reporting over 18 million members in the DACH region for the first time.

During the Corona pandemic, the network also offered its users premium features free of charge and offered help to job seekers.

An example can be found in the “Employee Exchange by XING” group: There, XING brings together companies that currently have employees without jobs (e.g. on short-time work) with companies that are urgently looking for employees.

Through these and other measures, XING is showing a possible way to speak openly about the current crisis. Furthermore, the company uses its own resources to help the people.
At the same time, the network gains new users – which in turn means positive figures for their own company.

Agenda | GANDT Fireside Chat Video #034