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Square’s online marketplace that allows consumers to shop online from local businesses, better known as Square Market, is now accepting bitcoins. What this means is that any business who is signed up with Square Market (which allows them to create an online storefront from their business), can accept your digital currency.
“For sellers, the experience won’t feel any different. Whether selling services or goods, sellers don’t have to change a thing, except potentially expecting new trailblazing customers and more sales,” Square wrote in their announcement post on Monday.
The San Francisco-based company says they’ve focused on making the bitcoin payment experience “smooth and simple”.
Here’s how it works (in short):
When a buyer decides they’d like to pay for an item with bitcoin, they will hit “Pay with Bitcoin” (easy enough, right?), and Square Market will generate a bitcoin address and attach it to the customer’s order.
The buyer then submits their payment as they would at any other bitcoin-accepting site/location. The address to which they send funds to is continually monitored, and when a payment is detected, they are taken to the confirmation screen.
The seller will then receive the amount converted to U.S. dollars, preventing risk of loss from bitcoin’s volatility. At that point, the product can be shipped or the service can be rendered.
Coinbase will be doing the payment processing on behalf of Square Market.
Square has been up-and-coming over the past couple of years and is becoming a force to reckon with in the payment processing sector. And while this bitcoin acceptance is only for the Market, we can help but to wonder whether or not Square will integrate bitcoin acceptance into their payments platform in the near future.
What do you think? Is it on the way?
- Brendon Clarke
