Block's Square Unleashes Bitcoin Payment Revolution at Bitcoin 2025!

Merchants Brace for Lightning-Fast Bitcoin Transactions

Hold onto your hats, folks! Block, Inc. just dropped the bombshell we've all been waiting for: Square is rolling out Bitcoin payments for merchants, and it's happening sooner than you think!

Jack Dorsey's brainchild made this game-changing announcement at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Vegas on May 27. The buzz was electric as they showed off the new feature live at the BTC Inc. merch store. You could feel the excitement in the air!

Get ready, because the rollout is kicking off in the second half of 2025. By 2026, every eligible Square seller could be in on the action, once the regulatory green light flashes.

Here's the scoop: Square's hardware will soon let merchants accept Bitcoin through the Lightning Network. We're talking about Bitcoin's slick layer-2 protocol that's all about speedy, cheap microtransactions. It's a game-changer!

Customers? They'll be scanning QR codes to pay, while Square's backend does its magic, crunching real-time exchange rates and confirming transactions for near-instant settlements. It's like magic, but real!

Merchants, you've got options too. You can take your Bitcoin payments straight up or flip them into fiat right at the point of sale. This is Square building on their 2024 Bitcoin Conversion tool, letting you stash a piece of your daily sales in Bitcoin without lifting a finger.

As of April 2025, Square's got nearly 4 million merchants in its corner, making it the top dog among U.S. merchant acquirers by seller count. That's a lot of potential Bitcoin action!

Miles Suter, Bitcoin Product Lead at Block, is all in on this move. He says it's a giant leap towards making Bitcoin the peer-to-peer payment system it was meant to be.

"Rolling out a native bitcoin experience to millions of sellers brings us one step closer to that goal," Suter declared. He's all about giving small businesses faster payments and more control over their revenue.

"We believe in an open, decentralized, fair, fast, and low-cost money system for everyone, and that's exactly what we want to bring to Square sellers," Suter added. It's a bold vision, and they're going for it!

This Bitcoin payment feature is a key piece of Block's bigger plan to weave Bitcoin into the fabric of everyday finance. It's playing nice with their self-custody wallet Bitkey, their mining venture Proto, open-source arm Spiral, and Cash App's push into retail Bitcoin adoption.

The timing's no accident. CEO Jack Dorsey warned back in April that Bitcoin could lose its edge if it didn't step up as a payment method. He confirmed they were hard at work on this very feature for Square and Bitkey.

This launch comes after a tough stretch for Block. Early 2024 saw them cutting about 1,000 jobs, followed by another 931 in March after a disappointing Q4 2023. But they're not letting that slow them down - they're charging full steam ahead into the Bitcoin payment revolution!