Block Inc vs Carta, Inc.: Strategic Comparison

This in-depth comparison examines Block Inc and Carta, Inc. across revenue, market value, business model, competitive positioning, and long-term growth strategy. Whether you are researching Block Inc on its own, evaluating Carta, Inc., or weighing the two companies side by side, the breakdown below highlights where each company leads and where the gap between Block Inc and Carta, Inc. is widest.

On the headline numbers, annual revenue is $24.2B (FY2025) for Block Inc and $442.0M (unaudited) (FY2024) for Carta, Inc., while their respective market capitalizations stand at $44.5B and N/A. Both Block Inc and Carta, Inc. are headquartered in United States. Their local markets and applicable rules may still differ.

Block Inc: Block, formerly Square, started in 2009 with a small white card reader that plugged into a phone's headphone jack and let food trucks, artists and coffee shops take card payments. It now runs Square for sellers, Cash App for 59 million monthly transacting customers, Afterpay for buy now, pay later, and smaller units including the TIDAL music service, the Bitkey bitcoin wallet and Proto mining hardware. Its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange as XYZ, a ticker adopted in January 2025, and it joined the S&P 500 on July 23, 2025. Co-founder Jack Dorsey, who also co-founded Twitter, has led it since the start. The company is headquartered in Oakland, California (officially distributed). The financial technology powerhouse (formerly Square) was famously founded in San Francisco, California by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to allow small merchants to accept credit cards via a tiny plastic headphone jack plug.

Carta, Inc.: Carta is the system of record for who owns what in private companies and funds. Founders use it to issue options and model funding rounds, employees use it to see and exercise their equity, and VC, PE, and private credit managers use it to run fund accounting and LP reporting. That position between companies and investors is what lets Carta sell valuations, fund administration, and legal services. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Block Inc and Carta, Inc. pursue distinct approaches to generating revenue, and understanding how each company operates is the foundation of any fair comparison between Block Inc and Carta, Inc..

Block Inc business model: Block runs a two-sided network. On the seller side, Square charges a fee on each card payment (in the U.S. on its free plan, 2.6% plus 15 cents in person and 3.3% plus 30 cents online) and adds paid software, hardware, payroll, banking and Square Loans. On the consumer side, basic Cash App transfers are free; the app earns from Cash App Card interchange, instant transfer fees, Borrow short-term loans, Afterpay pay-in-four plans and the spread on bitcoin sales. Gross profit is the number management steers by: $10.36 billion in 2025, with Cash App contributing $1.83 billion and Square $993 million in the fourth quarter alone. The long-term aim is to connect both sides, so that a Cash App customer pays a Square seller through Cash App Pay, Afterpay or the Neighborhoods local rewards program and Block keeps the economics at both ends.

Carta, Inc. business model: Carta sells annual software subscriptions plus service fees on both sides of the private market. Companies pay for cap table management, equity plan administration, and 409A valuations, with prices rising as stakeholder counts and funding stages grow. Investment firms pay for Fund ERP products: fund administration (software plus dedicated fund accountants), fund tax and K-1s, portfolio valuations, CRM, forecasting, and loan operations for private credit. Since May 2026, Carta Law adds outcome-based legal and compliance work such as NDAs, KYC, investor onboarding, and LP transfers. Sacra estimates that in 2023 cap tables and 409A valuations made up about 67% of ARR, fund administration about 27%, and private equity products about 5%. Carta shut its secondary trading business in January 2024, so brokerage is no longer part of the model.

The durability of a company's moat often decides long-term winners. Here is how the competitive advantages of Block Inc stack up against those of Carta, Inc..

Block Inc competitive advantage: Block's advantage is owning both ends of many small transactions. Cash App's peer-to-peer network spreads by itself, since receiving money means downloading the app, and every added product (the Cash App Card, direct deposit, Borrow, Afterpay) raises revenue per customer without new acquisition cost. Square sellers run payments, staff, inventory and loans on one system, so switching costs grow with each product they adopt. Square Financial Services, a Utah industrial bank that opened in March 2021, lets Block originate Square Loans and Cash App Borrow loans on its own charter, which few fintechs have.

Carta, Inc. competitive advantage: Carta's main advantage is its two-sided network. Startups put investors on their Carta cap tables, investors adopt Carta for fund administration, and those funds steer portfolio companies to Carta. As a registered transfer agent holding the legal record of ownership, Carta is also costly to leave: switching means migrating years of grants, vesting schedules, and investor records. Its cap table data feeds 409A valuations, compensation benchmarks, and portfolio valuations for funds.

Future prospects matter as much as current results. The growth strategies below explain how Block Inc and Carta, Inc. each plan to expand from here.

Block Inc growth strategy: Block's 2026 plan has four parts. Square is selling to larger and international sellers through a field sales team and independent sales organization partners; international GPV grew 28% in the second quarter of 2026. Cash App wants to be the main bank account for people with several income sources, using direct deposit and Cash App Green rewards status; primary banking actives reached 9.4 million in June 2026, up 17%. Lending is expanding through Borrow, Afterpay and Square Loans, all originated more cheaply now that Block's own bank handles Borrow. And Neighborhoods links Square sellers with nearby Cash App customers; it passed $1 billion of annualized seller GPV in June 2026. Bitcoin remains a long-term bet through Bitkey and Proto mining rigs, which began shipping in late 2025.

Carta, Inc. growth strategy: Carta grows by selling more products to the firms already on its ledger. The playbook is to take a professional service (409A valuations, fund accounting, legal work), automate it, and tie the output to Carta's system of record. Fund ERP bundles fund administration, fund tax, portfolio valuations, data collection, forecasting, and CRM. Acquisitions fill gaps: Tactyc (fund forecasting), Sirvatus (private credit loan operations, October 2025), Accelex (AI data extraction, October 2025), ListAlpha (CRM), and Avantia (legal and compliance, May 2026).

A closer look at the financial trajectory of Block Inc and Carta, Inc. rounds out the comparison.

Block Inc: Revenue was nearly flat in 2025, $24.19 billion against $24.12 billion, because bitcoin sales fell from $10.36 billion to $8.50 billion. Gross profit, which strips out the cost of the bitcoin Block resells, rose 17% to $10.36 billion and adjusted operating income rose 30% to about $2.3 billion. Net income attributable to common stockholders was $1.31 billion, down from $2.90 billion in 2024, a year lifted by a large fourth-quarter tax benefit. 2026 opened with a $308.7 million first-quarter net loss as layoff costs landed (about $495 million of restructuring charges across the first half), then second-quarter gross profit grew 25% to $3.17 billion with a record 27% adjusted operating margin. Block now guides to $12.51 billion of 2026 gross profit and $3.47 billion of adjusted operating income. It bought back $2.3 billion of stock in 2025, had $4.6 billion of repurchase authorization left at June 30, 2026, and pays no dividend. Block, Inc. maintains a formidable presence in the fintech space, with a market valuation generally exceeding $40 billion.

Carta, Inc.: Carta does not publish audited financials. Henry Ward has said the company was approaching $500 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025. Sacra estimates revenue of about $373 million in 2023, $442 million in 2024 (+19%), and $515 million in 2025 (+16.5%), with growth slowing after the end of zero-rate venture funding. Carta raised its last primary round, a $500 million Series G led by Silver Lake and Lightspeed, at a $7.4 billion valuation in August 2021; a January 2022 employee secondary sale reportedly priced it at $8.5 billion. Total equity funding is roughly $1 billion.