Square Completes Bitcoin Checkout Rollout for U.S. Merchants

By Tom Whitfield

Square has completed its planned rollout of Bitcoin payments to eligible U.S. merchants, with the company waiving Bitcoin processing fees through Dec. 31, 2026. Square plans to charge a flat 1% processing fee after that period, according to the company.

The completed rollout expands the pool of businesses able to accept cryptocurrency through Square’s payment system. It does not extend Bitcoin acceptance across Square’s entire merchant base, because only merchants that satisfy Square’s eligibility rules can offer the option.

What changes at checkout?

Square separates the customer’s payment asset from the merchant’s settlement currency. The resulting operating model contains three components:

• Customer payment: Customers can pay with Bitcoin (BTC) over the Lightning Network at qualifying checkouts.
• Merchant settlement: Sellers receive U.S. dollars by default but can choose to retain the Bitcoin proceeds instead.
• Processing fee: Square waives the fee through the end of 2026, then plans a flat 1% charge.

This structure lets shoppers use Bitcoin without requiring sellers to keep Bitcoin as their default settlement currency. For sellers that retain BTC, Square makes Bitcoin an elected settlement outcome at eligible checkouts, rather than a requirement across its merchant base.

Who can use Bitcoin payments?

Access remains constrained by eligibility requirements that Square did not define in the announcement. Merchants can offer Bitcoin only where the feature is available, so the completed rollout should not be read as a universal release to every seller.

Square’s broader merchant network includes more than 4 million businesses. The announcement does not disclose how many qualify for Bitcoin payments or how many newly enabled merchants joined the rollout, leaving adoption within that network unquantified.

That limitation separates network reach from product availability. A customer can hold BTC and still lack a way to spend it at a given Square seller if that merchant has not enabled the option.

What does the fee change?

Square’s fee waiver removes the company’s stated Bitcoin processing charge through the end of 2026. For eligible merchants, that period provides a zero-processing-fee benchmark for the Bitcoin payment product, separate from their choice of dollar or Bitcoin settlement.

After 2026, the flat 1% charge equals $1 for every $100 processed, giving sellers a straightforward cost comparison. Square did not publish separate rates for dollar-settled and Bitcoin-retained transactions, so the disclosed schedule remains 1% for the service.

Neither the fee waiver nor the settlement election changes who can transact. A qualifying merchant can continue receiving dollars by default while customers pay BTC over Lightning; the same merchant can instead retain the Bitcoin proceeds if it elects to do so.

What remains to be measured?

The announcement leaves two operating questions for Square: which merchants meet the eligibility rules, and how many of the more than 4 million businesses in its network can offer Bitcoin at checkout. The disclosure does not provide enough data to quantify that reachable checkout footprint.

The implementation also preserves a clear default for the merchant base. U.S. dollars remain the standard settlement currency, while Bitcoin retention remains optional and limited to sellers using the eligible product.

That balance matters because it expands the payment rail without making BTC the unit of account for every Square seller. It also leaves the commercial timetable intact: no Bitcoin processing fee through 2026, followed by the announced 1% schedule once the waiver expires.

The next concrete checkpoint is the end of 2026, when the waiver expires and the 1% rate takes over; until then, Bitcoin checkout remains bounded by merchant eligibility rather than universal availability across Square’s network.