Block Agrees to $40 Million Settlement with New York Over Lacking Money Laundering Controls
The payments and blockchain company has agreed to appoint an external monitor while it works out New York compliance issues.
Jesse Hamilton | Edited by Nikhilesh De on April 10, 2025, 3:02 PM
What you need to know:
- A blockchain and payments company founded by Jack Dorsey has agreed to a $40 million settlement with New York over money laundering enforcement issues.
- She noted that this is the latest state-level agreement regarding her Cash App.
Block Inc. has agreed to pay $40 million to resolve allegations by the New York Department of Financial Services that it failed to adequately prevent money laundering, the regulator said in a statement Thursday.
Block, which runs the peer-to-peer transaction app Cash and was formerly known as Square Inc., has been ordered by a New York regulator to fix all of its flaws and hand them over to an outside monitor. The regulator noted that the block’s “lack of attention to high-risk bitcoin transactions” in previous years effectively allowed anonymous transactions to flow through its system.
“The rapid growth of Block’s Cash App without a robust compliance system created risks and vulnerabilities that violated the rules that financial services companies operating in New York must follow,” NYDFS Superintendent Adraien Harris said in a statement. “The department is taking aggressive steps to ensure accountability, including appointing an independent monitor to oversee corrective actions.”
In a statement, Block said it did not acknowledge any of the findings in the New York case but was “pleased to put this matter behind us.”
“Following recent settlements with our other state money transmitter regulators, we have reached an agreement with the last remaining state money transmitter regulator, the New York Department of Financial Services, to resolve an issue primarily related to the Cash App’s past compliance program,” the company said.
The regulator's inspections covered the period from 2021 to 2022 at the company founded by Jack Dorsey, and the final decision found “serious compliance failures” that created a “high-risk environment vulnerable to exploitation by criminal elements.”
Since 2018, Block has been licensed under the New York State BitLicense to conduct digital asset transactions in the state.
Read more: Jack Dorsey's Square to Increase Investment in Bitcoin Mining, Shut Down Decentralized Project 'Web5'
