Square officially launched bitcoin payments on Nov. 10, 2025, enabling more than 4 million U.S. merchants to accept BTC at checkout, with New York sellers excluded from the initial rollout. The new feature, called “Bitcoin Payments,” is built directly into Square’s point-of-sale system and uses the Lightning Network to process transactions almost instantly.
How the payment flow works
Merchants can activate the feature through their Square Dashboard by navigating to Banking → Bitcoin and turning on Bitcoin Payments. When a customer chooses bitcoin at checkout, the terminal generates a Lightning invoice QR code. The buyer can scan the code with any Lightning-compatible wallet, including Cash App and similar services, to complete the payment. Sellers can choose to settle in bitcoin or U.S. dollars, allowing them to control how much crypto exposure they want in daily operations.
Square has also integrated settlement, reporting, and tax tracking into the merchant dashboard, aiming to make crypto payments easier to manage in day-to-day business. On pricing, the company said processing fees will remain at 0% through the end of 2026, before shifting to a flat 1% fee starting Jan. 1, 2027.
Limits, refunds, and merchant implications
According to Square’s support materials, each bitcoin transaction is capped at roughly the BTC equivalent of $600, while each seller has a daily limit of about $20,000. Because bitcoin transactions are final, refunds cannot be sent back onchain. Instead, Square will handle refunds through e-gift cards based on the U.S. dollar value of the original purchase.
The setup also removes card networks from the payment flow, which means merchants can avoid chargebacks—one of the more common pain points for small businesses handling traditional electronic payments.
Part of a broader bitcoin commerce strategy
The rollout is part of Square’s wider push to expand bitcoin utility in everyday commerce. Alongside direct BTC payments, the company introduced “Bitcoin Conversions,” a service that lets merchants automatically convert up to 50% of their daily card or ACH revenue into bitcoin held in a Square wallet. That service carries separate pricing, generally 1%, or 0.5% for premium users.
For now, the launch is limited to the U.S., and New York remains excluded because of the state’s digital-asset licensing framework. Even so, the move marks one of the largest merchant rollouts of bitcoin payments to date. If adoption grows, consumers could increasingly use bitcoin for routine purchases such as coffee, haircuts, or event tickets, pushing BTC further beyond its role as a speculative asset and into mainstream payments.