Block has reached an agreement in principle with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to defer an anti-money laundering charge for three years.
The proposed deferred prosecution agreement would address allegations that the Cash App and Square owner breached the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain an adequate compliance programme.
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The arrangement carries an estimated gross financial cost of around $964m. Deductions for earlier regulatory settlements would bring the net payable sum down to roughly $764m, according to the group’s quarterly regulatory filing.
Block recognised an accrual for that $764m as of 30 September 2026. At the close of that period, the company held $7.86bn in cash and cash equivalents.
The deal remains subject to a finalised text acceptable to all parties, as well as judicial approval, meaning a binding settlement is not yet in place.
If Block satisfies all obligations during the three-year term, prosecutors will request that the court dismiss the deferred charge with prejudice.
A breach of the final terms could lead to prosecution on the underlying charge, Block warned. The company added that eventual settlement costs could exceed the amount set aside.
The preliminary federal agreement follows a separate state resolution in April 2025 with New York’s Department of Financial Services, which required Block to pay $40m and appoint an independent monitor.
That state consent order established a 12-month monitoring period, extendable at the regulator’s discretion, to review anti-money laundering controls and oversee corrective actions.
New York regulators identified deficiencies in transaction surveillance and customer vetting across both fiat and bitcoin activity on Cash App, pointing to a backlog of unreviewed alerts that climbed from around 18,000 in 2018 to more than 169,000 by 2020.
The state authority acknowledged remedial steps taken by Block, including compliance team recruitment, restrictions on the number of accounts per user, and tighter controls to prevent excluded individuals from rejoining the service.
Separately, Block’s third-quarter shareholder letter showed that revenue from its bitcoin ecosystem fell 11% year on year to approximately $1.8bn.
Gross profit for the bitcoin segment dropped 50% over the same period, falling from $104m to $52m.
