Dive Brief:
- A federal court on Tuesday approved a $12.5 million class action lawsuit settlement between Cash App parent Block and Washington consumers who received unsolicited text messages from the financial app over a nearly six-year period.
- U.S. District Judge John Chun in Seattle deemed the settlement “fair, reasonable, and adequate and in the best interests of the Settlement Class,” and dismissed the case.
- Chun awarded attorney fees of $3.1 million from the settlement, with the class representative awarded $10,000 for her work in the case. Remaining class members who filed a claim by the Oct. 27 deadline will share about $8.7 million.
Dive Insight:
The settlement, reached in June, applies to people with Washington state telephone area codes who received the unwanted Cash App texts between November 2019 and August 2025.
Plaintiff Kimberly Bottoms, who filed her complaint against Block in late 2023, said she received text messages from people using Cash App’s Invite Friends feature, which allowed users to market the app to their friends in exchange for a $5 referral bonus.
In September, plaintiffs’ attorneys estimated that each person filing a claim would likely receive $88 to $147, based on an estimate of no more than 5% of the 1,975,187 class members in Washington submitting valid claims.
A spokesperson for Cash App did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday seeking comment on the settlement.
U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman offered preliminary approval of the settlement on July 29. Chun was assigned the case in September.
Washington’s Commercial Electronic Mail Act prohibits companies and individuals from sending spam emails to state residents without their consent. State legislators broadened the law in 2003 to include text messages, with the prohibition also covering third parties who “initiate or assist” in transmitting those texts, according to court records in the case.
Washington’s attorney general, Nick Brown, was allowed to intervene in December 2024 to defend the law’s constitutionality, which Block had questioned.
