(Reuters) – Square Inc reported a quarterly profit on Thursday as sky-high demand for bitcoin drove a surge in cryptocurrency transactions on its peer-to-peer payment service Cash App.
The payments firm, led by Twitter Inc top boss Jack Dorsey, posted a net income of $39.01 million, or 8 cents per share, for the quarter ended March, compared with a loss of $105.9 million, or 24 cents per share, a year earlier.
Bitcoin has surged in value this year as the backing of top-tier companies including Tesla Inc, Bank of NY Mellon and Square fuel its march to the mainstream.
Cash App generated $3.51 billion of bitcoin revenue and $75 million of bitcoin gross profit during the first quarter, each up about eleven times year-over-year.
Total net revenue in the quarter surged nearly four-fold to $5.06 billion.
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Niket Nishant in Bengaluru)