Bitcoin checkout—coming to a merchant near you

NYC hot dog vendors will soon start moving glizzies in cryptocurrency, if Jack Dorsey has anything to say about it.

Square, Dorsey’s point-of-sale system company, yesterday launched a pilot of real-time bitcoin payments at the Bitcoin 25 conference in Las Vegas, allowing attendees to spend crypto on merch at a pop-up store.

How it works: Instead of swiping or tapping, customers scan a QR code at checkout. The Lightning Network, a bitcoin payment protocol developed by startup Lightning Labs, enables near-instant settlement, while Square's integration handles real-time exchange rate calculations and confirmation notifications.

On the merchant side: The feature will start rolling out later this year, and be available to all of Square’s 4 million sellers by the end of 2026, according to the company.

Credit card companies rn:👀

The move is part of Square and Lightning Lab’s push to make bitcoin, widely thought of as just a store of value, something that can be used to buy things you value at a store.

• If widely adopted, it could disrupt the payment processing industry, a market dominated by Visa and Mastercard, who together process ~90% of all global transactions outside of China.
• Fast-food chain Steak n’ Shake, which began accepting bitcoin payments earlier this month, is seeing 50% lower processing fees on the crypto transactions vs. traditional credit card payments, according to its COO.

Zoom out: ~50 million Americans currently own bitcoin—a number higher than those who own gold—according to a new report from investment firm River.