Cash App-style simulator: free, online, and made for video

A Cash App-style simulator, in the sense this page uses the words, is a prop for video: an app that looks and behaves like a peer-payment app, held by an actor in a skit, a short film or a parody, with nothing real behind it. Pozer’s is called Tender. You fill it in from a browser, it installs to your phone’s home screen, and its buttons work when someone presses them on camera. This guide covers what’s on it, what each control does, what it costs, and how to get it onto the phone you’ll film with.

First, the line you don’t cross

A payment screen in a scene is a prop, like stage money or a prop cheque. The same screen shown to a real person as a real payment — to someone selling a phone on a marketplace, to a landlord, to a stranger selling concert tickets — is fraud, and it stays fraud whichever tool drew it. So is a screen of money coming in, posted to persuade people to send some of their own. Both are among the most common scams online, which is why this comes first here. Accounts that do either are closed, and we cooperate with law enforcement. The rest is in our acceptable use policy.

If you’re ever on the other side of it — selling something, and being shown a phone — don’t hand anything over until the money is in your own account, checked in your own app.

What “simulator” means here

Tender isn’t an app-store download, and it isn’t a copy of anyone’s app. It’s an original design, drawn to the conventions of a peer-payment app so it reads as the right kind of screen, which is why we describe it as Cash App-style. It carries no Cash App name, logo or artwork, and it isn’t affiliated with Cash App.

It’s online in the plain sense: the app lives at a link. You set it up in a browser and add it to your phone’s home screen, where it opens fullscreen with its own name and icon. It connects to no bank, card or payment network. Add money, Pay and Withdraw change the numbers inside the app on that phone and nothing else: no money moves, nothing is sent, and nobody anywhere is notified.

Two other things turn up under the same search. Image generators make a flat picture, which can’t be tapped — and in a scene where someone pays, the tap is the shot. And downloads that claim to be a modified real payment app, or ask you to sign in with a real account, are a risk to you and your money. A prop never needs your login, your card or anybody’s real account.

What’s on the screen

There are two tabs, Money and Activity, with a round $ button between them in the bottom bar. Money is the one the app opens on.

• The header. Your initials in a circle on the left — SS until you change them — and your tag on the right, $yourtag by default, with Money in large type underneath.
• The balance card. Cash balance, to the cent, with the masked tails of an account and a routing number under it: Account ∗∗5430 and Routing ∗∗329. Add money and Withdraw are the two pills at the foot of the card, and below a divider a Paychecks row reads $340 this month.
• Save & invest. A Savings card showing $1,751.00 and $249.00 to goal, with a ring beside it a little under nine-tenths full, and a Bitcoin card with its value, the day’s change in green or red, and a small line chart.
• Explore. Two tiles, Card offers (5% back this week) and Direct deposit (Paid up to 2 days early). They’re set dressing: the text is fixed and they don’t open anything.

Activity is a single list. Each line has a name, a note, when it happened and an amount, with money in shown as a plus in the accent colour and money out as a minus. It ships with four: Marcus R. for a studio session (+$2,400), Dina K. splitting dinner (−$86), Loop Media paying Invoice #204 (+$12,500) and Tomi A. for tickets (−$240).

What the buttons do

Three buttons open a keypad: the Add money pill, the Withdraw pill, and the $ in the middle of the bottom bar, which is Pay. The keypad arrives as a dark sheet sliding up over the app, whatever colours you’ve given the app itself.

1. The sheet says what you’re doing at the top — Pay, Add money or Withdraw — with Cancel on the left.
2. Type the amount. The figure groups its thousands as you go — $2,500, not 2500 — takes up to two decimal places, and ⌫ removes the last character.
3. If you like, type a name in the field under the amount: To (optional) when paying or withdrawing, From (optional) when adding money.
4. Tap the button at the bottom, which carries the action’s name. It stays dimmed until the amount is above zero.

The sheet then turns into a receipt. A circle pops in and a tick draws itself inside it. Above the amount is the word Confirmed — Received, when you’ve added money — and below the amount, the new balance. Then the details. For a payment of $86 to Dina K., they read:

The reference is a fresh random code on every receipt, and the time is the phone’s own clock at the moment of the tap. The receipt never disappears on its own: it stays until someone taps Done, or the dimmed app above it. Behind it, the balance has already moved by the amount at the top, and a new line sits at the top of Activity marked Now — Payment sent for Pay, Added money for Add money, Instant withdrawal for Withdraw.

That headline is what actually moved, written the way the balance is: $2,500, or $25.50 when there are cents. Pay or withdraw more than the balance holds and only what’s there leaves — the receipt headlines that figure rather than the one typed, a withdrawal’s fee and Arrives are worked out on it, and the balance reads $0.00. From an empty balance nothing leaves at all, and the receipt says so: a grey dash where the tick would be, Not sent in place of Confirmed, $0 with no minus sign, and Not sent · No balance in the Status line.

Where the fee goes

Each action carries the method and fee a real transfer of that kind would, so the receipts differ the way people expect:

• Add money: Standard · 1–3 days, fee $0.00.
• Pay: Instant · free, fee $0.00.
• Withdraw: Instant withdrawal, with a 1.5% fee, and one line the others don’t have — Arrives, which is what’s left after the fee. Withdraw $1,000 and the receipt reads Fee $15.00 and Arrives $985.00, while the balance falls by the full $1,000.00, because the fee comes out of what’s sent.

What you can change

Every field below is in the editor, and the same fields are in the Edit panel inside the installed app, so figures can be changed on the phone between takes.

• Header: Tag, up to 20 characters, and Avatar initials, up to two.
• Balance: Cash balance; Currency, in US dollars, pounds, euros or rupiah; the last digits of the account and routing numbers, up to four each and always shown masked, so there’s never a full number on screen; and Paychecks this month.
• Save & invest: Savings balance, Savings goal, Bitcoin value and Bitcoin change % today. The ring and the to-goal figure are worked out from the first two. The bitcoin card isn’t connected to any market — both its numbers are the ones you type — and its chart is drawn to agree with the percentage: it ends higher on an up day and lower on a down one, and wanders more on a day that moved more.
• Theme: Accent, teal by default, which colours the $ button, the savings ring and every incoming amount; and Background, a light grey by default. Choose a dark background and the whole screen turns dark with it.
• Activity: up to eight lines, each with a Name, a Note, an Amount, an Incoming switch and a When.

Only two things move when someone taps: the cash balance and the Activity list. Savings, the goal, bitcoin and paychecks stay exactly where you set them.

Make the figures tell one story

The defaults describe one person: money arriving from Loop Media on Invoice #204 and from a studio session, a paycheck of only $340 this month, a dinner split with a friend. That reads as a freelancer having a good month, and every figure on the screen agrees with it. Whatever character your scene needs, set the fields together rather than one at a time.

• The list sets the scale. Viewers judge a balance by the amounts under it. A student at the end of the month doesn’t have $42,680.50 in cash, and doesn’t get paid $12,500 by invoice — bring the balance down and the Activity lines with it.
• Paychecks should fit the balance. A large balance beside a small paycheck needs another source of money in Activity, the way the defaults have invoices.
• Balances have cents, and a round $5,000.00 looks typed. Keep the times in order down the list, too: Now, then Today, then Yesterday.

What’s free

Everything works on the free tier: building the app, installing it, and every button on it. You need a free account, which is an email address and a six-digit code — no card and no password. Free apps carry a SIMULATED · POZER.COM mark on screen, receipts included, and Pro, at US$12.99/mo, removes it.

Getting it onto your phone

1. Open Tender in the editor: the fields down the side, a live preview of the phone beside them. The preview switches between Money and Activity, but its buttons do nothing — the keypad lives in the installed app.
2. Name the app. The name sits under the icon on the home screen, and the editor offers a few to start from: Tender, Dime, Quid and Greenback. Upload an icon of your own, or let the editor make a letter tile from the name. Set both before installing — they’re fixed on the home screen the moment the app is added.
3. Fill in your figures and tap Create home-screen app. The first time, it asks for your email and sends you a code.
4. Open the link on the phone you’ll film with. The editor shows a QR code for it; point the phone’s camera at it.
5. On iPhone, in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen — Chrome and the browsers inside Instagram or TikTok won’t install it properly. On Android, in Chrome, tap ⋮, then Install app.

From then on it opens from the home screen like any other app. Whatever happens on it — a payment, a withdrawal — is still there when you close and reopen it, until you publish a new version, which replaces it. To put the numbers back yourself, hold two fingers still on the screen for a moment: the Edit button, which only you see, appears for five seconds. Tap it, then Reset to published values. The first time you open the installed app, Edit shows itself once, with a note saying how to bring it back.

Where to go from here

• A short film or a TV-style scene: the film prop guide, for planning the phone’s states scene by scene and clearing what goes on it.
• The payment itself — keypad, tap, receipt, reaction: how to film a money-sent scene.
• Comedy built on the fee, the savings ring and the activity feed: nine payment app skit ideas.
• A still for a thumbnail, an insert or a storyboard: the mockup guide.
• Every field in one place: the template page.