Requesting money on Cash App takes about 30 seconds. You open the app, enter an amount, and send a request to anyone using their phone number, email address, or $Cashtag. The recipient gets a notification and has 14 days to accept or decline before the request automatically expires.
Step-by-Step: Send a Money Request
The process works the same whether you’re asking a friend to pay you back for dinner or collecting rent from a roommate:
- Open Cash App on your phone
- Enter the dollar amount you want to request
- Tap Request
- Type in the person’s email address, phone number, or $Cashtag
- Optionally add a note explaining what the request is for
- Tap Request again to send it
The person on the other end will see your request in their Cash App activity feed and as a push notification if they have those enabled. They can accept (which sends you the money immediately) or decline. If they do nothing, the request expires after 14 days.
Adding a note is optional but worth doing. A quick “Friday dinner” or “electric bill, June” makes it clear why you’re asking and reduces the chance your request gets ignored or mistaken for spam.
Collecting Money From a Group
If you need to split a bill among several people, sending individual requests works fine, but Cash App also offers a feature called Pools designed specifically for group collections. Pools let you gather money from multiple contributors into a single shared fund.
To start a Pool, go to the payment tab in Cash App and create a new pool. You can name it (something like “Beach house weekend” or “Birthday gift for Sarah”), set a target dollar amount, and invite people to contribute. Invitations go out through the app via $Cashtag, or you can text or share a link that lets people contribute using Apple Pay or Google Pay even if they don’t have Cash App installed.
As the organizer, you can track who has contributed and how close the group is to the goal. When you’re ready, you close the pool and transfer the collected money to your Cash App balance. You can close it at any time, whether or not the group hit the target amount.
Account Limits for Receiving Money
How much you can receive depends on whether your account is verified. Unverified accounts (and Sponsored accounts) can send and receive up to $1,000 over a rolling 30-day period, with a total lifetime account limit of $1,500. That ceiling makes unverified accounts impractical for anything beyond small, occasional transactions.
Verified accounts can send up to $40,000 on a rolling 30-day basis. Receive limits for verified accounts are set individually and visible in the “Limits” tab under your account settings. Verifying requires providing your full legal name, date of birth, and the last four digits of your Social Security number. The process usually takes just a few minutes.
If you’re planning to request larger amounts or use Cash App regularly, verifying your identity before you start sending requests will save you from hitting a wall mid-transaction.
What Happens After You Send a Request
Once your request goes out, it sits in your activity feed as a pending item. The recipient has 14 days to respond. There’s no built-in “remind” button, but you can send a new request or simply message the person outside the app if they haven’t responded.
If you change your mind or sent the request to the wrong person, you can cancel it from your activity feed before the other person accepts. Look for the pending request, tap on it, and you’ll see the option to cancel.
Keep in mind that pending requests are different from pending payments. If you sent a payment (not a request) and it shows as pending, Cash App will automatically cancel it after 24 hours if the recipient hasn’t completed any required steps. You can check the status by pulling down on your activity feed to refresh.
Staying Safe With Money Requests
Requesting money from people you know is straightforward, but you should be cautious about requests you receive from strangers. A few things to keep in mind:
Cash App will never send you a payment request. If you receive a request claiming to be from Cash App itself, asking you to send money to “verify” your account or “claim” a payment, it’s a scam. There is no such thing as a clearance fee or account verification payment.
Be wary of anyone who sends you money “by accident” and then asks you to return it. This is a common scheme where the sender disputes the original payment with their bank after you send money back, leaving you out the amount you returned.
Before accepting or paying any request, check the sender’s profile to confirm it’s someone you recognize. Decline requests from people you don’t know, and block repeat offenders. If someone promises you free money or claims they can “flip” your funds into a larger amount, that’s always a scam. No legitimate transaction requires you to send money first in order to receive a larger payment later.