Share this article

Square Pilots Real-Time Bitcoin Payments in Vegas, Plans Full Availability to Customers in 2026

The feature would still need regulatory approval in order to be made available to all customers.

Updated May 28, 2025, 2:32 p.m. Published May 27, 2025, 8:05 p.m.
Apple Pay image via Wikimedia Commons

What to know:

  • Square is piloting bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas.
  • Attendees can buy goods by scanning a barcode, with near-instant settlement handled by the Lightning Network and Square.
  • The company aims to roll out the feature broadly by 2026, pending regulatory approval.

Jack Dorsey’s Square has taken bitcoin payments a step further at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas this week.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newsletters

For three days, the company is piloting a program where attendees can make purchases with their bitcoin by scanning a barcode. Payments are then settled in near real-time via the Lighting Network while Square handles real-time exchange rate calculations and confirmation notifications, according to a press release.

Square hopes to make the feature available to a broader audience later this year and to all customers by 2026, pending regulatory approval.

“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,” said Miles Suter, Bitcoin Product Lead at Block (XYZ), the parent company of Square.



Más para ti

Robinhood vs. Vitalik: Why the trading app is building it own L2 while Ethereum founder cools on them

Robinhood's Vlad Tenev speaks at Token2049 in Singapore (Token2049)

Centralized exchanges are moving forward building their own blockchain infrastructure even as the broader Ethereum ecosystem debates its future.

Lo que debes saber:

  • The Robinhood Chain testnet has logged four million transactions in its first week that its testnet chain is live, CEO of the investment platform Vlad Tenev said on X on Thursday.
  • The chain, which focuses on tokenization and trading, comes at a time when centralized exchanges are increasingly building their own blockchain infrastructure even as the broader Ethereum ecosystem debates its future.
  • Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin declared that the protocol’s long-held layer-2 rollup-centric roadmap “no longer makes sense,” and that Ethereum’s base layer is scaling faster than expected.