Square Begins Rollout of Bitcoin Payments for Sellers, Targets Full Availability by 2026

Jack Dorsey's Square (XYZ) has begun the rollout of bitcoin payments for merchants on its network. Square began onboarding the first sellers, enabling them to accept Lightning Network-powered BTC payments from customers, Owen Jennings, executive officer at Square's parent company Block (XYZ), posted on X on Tuesday . Payments are settled in real-near time using Bitcoin layer-2 Lightning, with Square processing the exchange into fiat. Square plans to make the service available to all merchants using its sales platform by next year. The company piloted the system at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas in May, allowing attendees to make purchases in BTC by scanning a barcode. Square regards Lightning as fundamental to its plans to accelerate bitcoin payments adoption, which has been hampered historically by slow speeds. Lightning tackles this by creating micropayment channels that can process transaction away from the main Bitcoin blockchain.